World distribution premiere for Palme d’Or winner Mungiu

by Camillo de Marco

22/08/2007 - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [trailer, film focus] by Romania’s Cristian Mungiu will have its world distribution premiere in Italy on August 24 on 120 screens, through Lucky Red.

The release comes during a relatively difficult period for the Italian market, for a film that is the exact opposite of US blockbusters and tells "a simultaneously personal and universal story, that regards and involves all of us,” as the director said yesterday during at the press screening in Rome.

The surprising film, winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (see our ample Focus) – is further confirmation of the period of great ferment that Romanian cinema is currently experiencing, with Radu Mihaileanu (Train of Life, Go, See and Become, see Focus), Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mister Lazarescu [trailer]), Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest [trailer, film focus], see Focus) and Cristian Nemescu, who sadly died at only 27 after having shot the fascinating California Dreamin' [trailer] (see news).

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is the first film of a series entitled "Tales From the Golden Age”, which Mungiu is dedicating to personal stories of Romania’s Communist era. "The ideology will remain in the background. I will tell individual stories, that I know directly or that others have told me,” he said.

(Translated from Italian)