Director Cristian Mungiu’s drama from Romania, R.M.N., is a gripping portrait of ethnic and economic resentments tearing at the fabric of a small town.
Mungiu’s film tells the story of Matthias, who after a violent incident at his job in Germany, returns home to his Transylvanian village. When the factory his ex-lover Csilla manages hires foreign workers, deep-rooted impulses and resentments emerge, shattering the veneer of peace in the community. The film earned Mungiu a Palme d’Or nomination at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
On July 6, after the Special Projects Committee Global Cinema Series screening in Los Angeles, via video from Romania, Mungiu discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Global Cinema Series Co-Chair Victoria Hochberg, where he spoke about the importance of location and setting.
“One of the most difficult things that we have to do in film is to find the equivalent of this abstract level that we want to parse together with the story. In this story, I really wanted to speak about fear and anxiety. For me, it’s very important to make the spectators not only want to understand what happens to the characters but feel as well. This is why I try to use the kind of music and setting that can transmit as much as possible what the main characters feel. And then there’s a special use of setting. For this film, I hoped that this forest surrounding this village and in the background of every other house would suggest little by little the darkness of this community which is very secluded. I hoped that people might associate this at some point with our subconscious, from where all these dark impulses are coming. I looked for a location like this. Of course, you cannot always find precisely what you need, but I started doing something. For every other of my last three or four films, I built directly on the main location. So, Csilla’s house in this film, which is very important, was built from scratch. It’s a way of also communicating nonverbally and this is the role of the sets for me.”
Mungiu’s other directorial works include the feature films Graduation, Beyond the Hills, Tales from the Golden Age, Occident and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.