4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) directed by Cristian Mungiu

Piers Handling selected Cristian Mungiu as one of the best emerging film directors working today and chose the film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) as an example that best represents his work.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Otilia and Gabita share the same room in a student dormitory. They are colleagues at the university in a small town in Romania, during the last years under Communism. Otilia rents a room in a cheap hotel. In the afternoon, they meet a certain Mr. Bebe. Gabita is pregnant, abortion is illegal, and neither of them have gone through something like this before.

“Played out within the Aristotelian dramatic confines of a single day, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days shows Mungiu giving voice to an entire generation of women whom, as is made apparent in the final scene of the film, prefer not to talk about the horrors they have undergone. In this disturbing reclamation of history, Mungiu reveals himself to be a social documentarian of uncommon sensitivity.”

Piers Handling, co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival.