Against the Tide: Cristian Mungiu, Fjord - Cannes, 2026

Versiunea în română a acestui articol aici.

In the end, it was inevitable. After building his most recent films around moral dilemmas of the "he said, she said, they said..." variety, Cristian Mungiu has finally formalized this approach and, broadly speaking, embraced the corresponding genre. Americans call it a courtroom drama or legal drama, and I wonder how many Romanian speakers use an equivalent term, since the genre barely exists in Romanian cinema. However, Mungiu being Mungiu, Fjord isn't a film featuring lawyers and courtroom arguments in the American tradition, but rather an arthouse take on the legal drama, and its ambitions - needless to say - are international. Films in this genre usually begin with the trial and then piece together the facts in a heated back-and-forth between the defense and the prosecution. In Fjord, the Romanian director takes the opposite approach. To put the puzzle together, you're given one piece after another, gradually, in chronological order, with no idea what the complete picture will look like. That is why Fjord is both Mungiu's best film since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and the most demanding and exasperating in the way it tests your patience over its 146-minute runtime.

On the other hand, the American courtroom drama is one of the most optimistic genres in cinema. The truth, at least in broad terms, can be uncovered, as films belonging to this genre suggest, and the jurors who deliver the verdict - when a jury has a part to play in the plot - can reach a consensus through rational reasoning. Nothing of the sort in Fjord, which is written with caution and skepticism. Not regarding the facts, which have been largely known to the public since 2015. Fjord is partly inspired by the case of Marius and Ruth Bodnariu, whose five children were taken into custody by the Norwegian Child Welfare Services (Barnevernet) following suspicions that the parents had used physical violence to punish them. Subsequently, the couple admitted to using such disciplinary methods, which they described as mild, but then presented their own version of the events: as members of a neo-Protestant religion, they claimed that the school and authorities had viewed them with suspicion and had treated them accordingly because of their faith. Mungiu's screenplay is initially cautious with regard to both sides. Something vaguely violent has happened just before the film's opening shot, and a later scene in the same vein conveniently takes place behind a partition wall. Within the family's private sphere, therefore, there's no way to know exactly what happened. As for the school's dispute with the family's children - the family is renamed in the film Gheorghiu -, a line or two in the film suggest that some teachers quickly dismiss the latter's biblical arguments. Therefore, no religious proselytizing is allowed at school. From these facts, however, we gradually move on to words and interpretations. When Fjord reaches its long-awaited climax - the court trial -, Mungiu's carefully crafted screenplay suggests that, even with the facts laid bare, it is still the interpretations that divide us.

It's important for Fjord that the family in the film is affiliated with a neo-Protestant church. (As a matter of fact, Marius and Ruth Bodnariu are Pentecostals.) As someone who spent four or five years of my adolescent years within such a community, Mungiu's interest for its inner workings only seems to go so far. There are two or three nuances missing that would have made the story more balanced - for instance, the extremely important concept of the "sinful world", which in neo-Protestant terminology refers to everything that is impure, different from the true religious calling, and (very often) modern. Cell phones, for instance, can sometimes pertain to this "sinful world", since they can make everything considered sinful by religious standards more appealing. Without this contextual explanation, the Gheorghiu family seems simply to be unusually demanding of their children, not allowing them to take pleasure in the things that all children their age enjoy. Generally speaking, Mihai Gheorghiu (Sebastian Stan) and Lisbet Gheorghiu (Renate Reinsve) come across, in Mungiu's version, as a decent family who just occasionally invite other people to their church. I'm not suggesting that this isn't the case. The tragedy of such a family in a country as proud of its progressiveness as Norway, however, stems from this very anxiety about what is modern - let alone of progressive ideas. Fjord somewhat simplifies its demonstration in this regard. We know that the teachers can't stomach the religious views of the Gheorghiu children, but we never find out what the family itself thinks about Norwegian secularism. However, I don't want to split hairs over the issue. Even though I haven't had anything to do for a long time with the Pentecostal community into which I grew up, I cannot help but admire - despite some reservations - the sensitivity with which Mungiu portrays the first complex, touchingly human characters affiliated with this religion who play significant roles in a Romanian arthouse film. Comparing them to the usual representations in Romanian media or cinema - whether tongue-in-cheek or otherwise - isn't even worth the effort.

After all, one might say that Mungiu is more interested in complex characters than in religion itself. Just as his Beyond the Hills (2012) was not a sociological study of life in a Romanian monastery, Fjord does not seek to delve into theological debates either. Mungiu, I believe, views such situations with the opportunistic insight of a professional storyteller, for whom what is true is less relevant than what is useful in a narrative sense. Religious life in the Gheorghiu family, for instance, is initially depicted in a long take in which several church members, alongside the protagonists, sing a neo-Protestant hymn. Visible in the foreground, the family's eldest daughter accompanies them on the piano. In a later scene, she is again playing the piano, this time at school, performing a religious song, until a teacher interrupts her. The girl protests, pointing out that the song doesn't even have lyrics. "It doesn't matter", comes the reply. This is how you cleverly instill an idea in the minds of the viewers - and a touch of outrage, even for the secularly-inclined.


At this point, surely Mungiu must be tired of hearing that he makes films in which he proves everyone right and refuses to take a stand. Fjord, in any case, is not such a film. There's so much one can point out about it, just not that it's neutral. Starting from the procedural rules that were not followed in the Bodnariu family's case, Fjord recounts the eagerness with which the Norwegian authorities took the children into custody and tried to convince the parents to sign statements incriminating themselves. It's as if you can sense the voracious hands of the system, reaching out melodramatically toward the children. But Mungiu doesn't stop there. The characters who are more inclined to point the finger at the two parents - the social worker handling the children's adoption placement and the prosecutor at the trial - share a common trait: their arrogance. They generally sound neutral (the law is the law, there's nothing you can do about it), but from one scene to the next they can't help but slip in the occasional snide, condescending remark directed at the two Gheorghius. Little by little, the film's provocative thesis takes shape: the path toward a society with more progressive values is wide and welcoming to everyone, but it's a one-way street, and, if you're caught moving in the opposite direction, you deserve whatever happens to you. This is a major arthouse film that does not shy away from challenging a far too convenient divide between virtuous progressive values and outdated conservative beliefs. It would be easy to place Mungiu alongside the conservatives, but Fjord actually poses a more complex and uncomfortable question: how do the arguments for tolerance and multiculturalism play out from the perspective of those who don't know how to relate to them? In this respect, with a few shifts in emphasis, Fjord is similar to another equally unsettling film that premiered at Cannes last year, Ari Aster's Eddington. I don't think Fjord (or Eddington, for that matter) is about making a point for the sake of it or showcasing a variety of viewpoints, but rather about Mungiu's own stance, which he expresses more explicitly in a recent interview. When the Romanian ultra-conservatives make an appearance halfway through the film, it's easy to find them, as minor characters, somewhat ridiculous. However, Fjord doesn't let you latch onto other characters who could teach these ultra-conservatives a tough lesson. On the contrary, the film makes it abundantly clear that the very act of lecturing and pointing an accusing finger is part of the problem. In the end, Fjord is a contemporary fable about law, guilt, compassion and the perils of moral superiority, and it's designed to spark a debate.

Fjord is a film packed with dialogue - and one that's well worth talking about. There is a certain solemnity to it, due to the way it is directed - in long-take shots that had begun to lose their formal novelty, both in Romania and internationally, over the past two decades. Occasionally, even this austere style makes concessions. Filmed in Norway, Fjord makes the most of the local scenery and even uses it as a visual motif in two shots that symbolically echo one another. Probably aware himself of the occasional slow pace of the scenes, the director has cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru perform at one point in the film one of the most daring feats of his career. The best thing about Fjord, however, is the script and the complex way it is written - especially the lengthy courtroom scene, in which Mungiu moves from the subtly disorganized chorus of voices in the longest scene of his previous film, R.M.N., to an almost nonchalant mastery of pacing and dialogue. The dialogue is in this case sharp, expressive, and carefully crafted. In short, it's the best spoken scene I've seen in a Romanian film (and beyond) in quite some time. Sebastian Stan is remarkable in the trial scene, and his performance proves - just as Renate Reinsve does in her role - that, under Mungiu's direction, actors who are otherwise expansive can brilliantly adopt a more introspective style. When questioned by the prosecutor, the character played by Stan seems crushed by his own shame and, at the same time, desperate to cling to his last shreds of dignity. There is something beautiful and tragic about this moment of balance between humiliation and humanity.

Occasionally, Fjord gives me the impression that it is aware of its own importance, that it wants to say everything there is to say about its subject matter all at once. In the closing scene, it seems like it wants to go even further. I hope my eyes were misleading me and that the film doesn't suddenly take a turn toward magical realism at the very end. Otherwise, it would ruin the whole premise. Just like the society it portrays, Fjord is ultimately fraught with contradictions, but Mungiu admirably succeeds in his most pressing goal: to convey a universal, provocative and unsettling story.