President Nicușor Dan and interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan congratulated Cristian Mungiu after his film Fjord won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival this past weekend. This marked the Romanian director’s second Palme d’Or, following his 2007 victory for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

“Congratulations to Cristian Mungiu for the second Palme d’Or at Cannes, an extraordinary achievement,” president Nicușor Dan wrote on Facebook, also congratulating the film’s team and lead actor Sebastian Stan.

“I appreciated in Cristian Mungiu’s previous films the fact that they ask questions, that they walk the fine line between two or more conflicting sets of values. For me, this is the meaning of art: understanding humanity from as many perspectives as possible,” the president added.

Dan also described the success as recognition for Romania’s New Wave cinema movement, mentioning directors including Cristi Puiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Cătălin Mitulescu.

“Contemporary Romanian cinema is an excellent calling card for Romania, and the administration must do much more to use it for the benefit of Romania and Romanian cinematography,” he added.

In his turn, interim prime minister Ilie Bolojan said the award reflects “talent, hard work, and the way Romanian culture can reach major international stages.”

“We are glad to see a Romanian filmmaker appreciated at the highest level, and we thank him for the image he continues to promote about Romania,” Bolojan wrote in a post on social media.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture announced that Fjord has been added to the list of strategic cultural projects eligible for state support for an Oscar awards campaign. Interim minister Demeter András said the ministry would support the film as part of Romania’s cultural diplomacy efforts ahead of the Academy Awards competition, according to Agerpres.

Fjord stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian-Norwegian couple involved in a conflict with Norwegian child protection authorities. Marking Cristian Mungiu’s English-language debut, the film received a 12-minute standing ovation at the Cannes premiere.

Besides the Palme d’Or, the film also received the François Chalais Prize, the Citizenship Award, the Ecumenical Jury Prize, and the FIPRESCI Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Accepting the award, Cristian Mungiu described the film as “a commitment against all forms of extremism” and a message of “tolerance, inclusion, and empathy.”

“It is important in cinema to speak about relevant things, in order to understand the direction in which the world is heading,” Mungiu said during the ceremony.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Facebook/Festival de Cannes; by Joachim Tournebize / FDC)