Bucharest, April 2007

by Ludmila Cvikova

One of the last email exchanges we had with the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu was just before the Cannes Film Festival 2007. He had invited me to the Cannes premiere of his film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days when I was in Bucharest a few weeks before, and when he had just heard about the film being included in competition at Cannes.

The email exchange thereafter was short and funny: we were discussing our wardrobe and the need to look representative on the famous red carpet ...I had bought a nice black evening dress, was missing proper shoes though. For me it's more simple, wrote Cristian back to me, I have the suit I wore 4 years ago (even in the Quinzaine, there is a day when you walk on the red carpet ). He was referring to our first meeting in Cannes, four years ago when he was there invited with his debut Occident, supported by Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund. And now I am running to get the shoes!

Cristian's delicate humor, his modesty and his good manners made a great impression on me from our first meeting in Rotterdam in 2003. This was one of the reasons that I did not hesitate long when I was invited to the 3rd edition of the B-est festival's jury in Bucharest, Romania this year. I was looking forward to seeing the country, to meeting him again, as well as all the other Romanian film directors and friends whom I have met over the years.

My colleague Bert-Jan Zoet, the IFFR Press Officer, has joined me for a few days. We decided to organise a small IFF Rotterdam cocktail for our Romanian friends. It took place in the old city's Cafe Amsterdam with a feeling of the real brown cafes so typical for Amsterdam, and the real tastes of the Netherlands like herring, bitterballen, Dutch cheese and Dutch beers. No tulips though.
We were waiting with excitement to see who would come there but ended up a bit disappointed, as from all those directors who attended the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival, Tudor Giurgiu (the former director of the Transylvania IFF, then the general director of the Romanian TV) was the only one who did find some time to join us for a drink.

The festival lasted a week, it was cold in the cinema and the jury was put in a hotel in the outskirts of Bucharest that made it impossible for us to make our own programme and see the films out of competition in case we would like to. The opening wanted to look like a Romanian Oscar ceremony without the glamour, the red carpet being put down five minutes before the opening and in front of our eyes. The only star there was Nikita Mikhalkov, famous Russian actor/ director. From the five jury members announced at the beginning of the festival, there were only three left at the end of it. The two Romanian actors gave it up for unknown reasons.

All in all this might sound not very cheerful but there were some light moments as well. The enthusiastic volunteers who tried to organise the festival (in the Romanian way, I must say) and the fascinating city of Bucharest with its architecture reminiscent of the good old days of the city. There used to be many full cinemas there, nowadays they are all closed or turned into shabby shops. A sad story, as one of the girls told me that she remembered her parents going to see movies every weekend during the 60-ies. Nowadays Romania is a country with one of the lowest cinema attendance in Europe – 0,2 a year per capita – and the boom of Romanian film is known much better to the world than to the domestic audiences.

The best thing to happen of my whole Romanian trip took the longest to come, literally on my last day in Bucharest. A few hours before my departure, Cristian Mungiu invited me to the film set where he was shooting his latest film Tales From the Golden Age. It was a tiny flat somewhere in the city. This was a real treat and a great honour. I was taken to the flat where some crew members were squeezed in a living room together with the owners, an elderly Romanian couple, who were sitting on the sofa and watching quietly what was going on around.

The rest of the crew was hanging in the corridor outside. The D.O.P. Oleg Mutu and the young actors were shooting in the kitchen next to the room. Cristian invited me to sit next to him and watch the take on the monitor. Honestly, I have known many film directors in my life and have worked in the film studios before – but I never saw such a balanced, calm and nice director in action as at that moment. I did not have a clue what Cristian was saying to his crew members and to the young, excellent actors but it all was in a warm voice of a person who knows where he was going to and he also knew how to get there. He told me that he actually wanted to make this short stories film as his second film but then he changed his mind and decided to shoot 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days before, to make it easier to submit for the Cannes 2007 Competition.

We shared a vegetarian meal at the yard, accompanied by the crew, and then I left, impressed by the scene and the creative atmosphere there.
I remembered Cristian's words back home, when I watched the Closing Ceremony of the Cannes FF and heard the name Cristian Mungiu as the Golden Palm winner. The television camera switched immediately to the row where he was sitting. It was a matter of moments, Cristian bowed, smiled at his wife, kissed her gently and off he went, to the stage, shining. A moving moment that was. His drive to make 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in time to submit it to Cannes paid off.