President Nicușor Dan congratulated the director Cristian Mungiu for winning the second Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival with the film “Fjord”, which he described as “an extraordinary performance”.
“Congratulations to Cristian Mungiu for the second Palme d'Or at Cannes, an extraordinary performance. Congratulations to the entire team of the film, with many Romanians, and to Sebastian Stan in the lead role,” said Nicușor Dan, in a message posted on Facebook.
The head of state also specified what he appreciated about Mungiu's films.
“I appreciated Cristian Mungiu's previous films that they ask questions, that they walk the fine line between two or more conflicting sets of values. This, for me, is the meaning of art: knowing the human from as many perspectives as possible”, said Nicușor Dan.
“The administration needs to do more”
The president also said that the success at Cannes “is also a recognition of the new wave of Romanian cinema”, mentioning the Romanian directors “Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Cătălin Mitulescu and all the others”.
“They had the courage to express themselves differently than the cinematography before them, to relate directly and capture the questions of a society in transformation, thus often reaching universality,” Nicușor Dan also wrote.
In the end, Nicușor Dan appreciated that “contemporary Romanian film is an excellent business card for Romania”, and “the administration must do much more to use it for the benefit of Romania and Romanian cinema”.
Cristian Mungiu won Saturday evening, at the Cannes Film Festival, the prestigious Palme d'Or award for “Fjord”, the film that tells a story that took place in Norway, the history of a family of Romanian migrants.
Mungiu received the Palme d'Or award for the second time in his career. For the first time, Cristian Mungiu received the Palme d'Or in 2007, for the film “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”, a painful description of the story of “mandatory” births under Romanian communism.
