Cristian Mungiu on 'Fjord': "I'm Not Defending Any Ideology"

Cristian Mungiu's Fjord, winner of the Palme d'Or and screened at the 64th New York Film Festival, opens on October 9. The Romanian director's new feature follows a religious, conservative Romanian family — led by Sebastian Stan and Renata Reinsve — settling into a small Norwegian town after a death in the family. When one of the daughters arrives at school with bruises, child services intervene, a court case begins, and a custody battle follows.

The film drew passionate supporters and detractors from both left and right during its festival run. In a wide-ranging interview with The Film Stage, Mungiu addressed the decade-long genesis of the project, rising right-wing fundamentalism, and what he sees as Hollywood's timidity.

"It's a film that makes people want to have an opinion and to express an opinion, which is very seldom," Mungiu said of the press circuit.

Where did the story come from?

Mungiu first noticed the original case roughly ten years ago, when it dominated the press, and tracked its many stages while investigating similar cases that formed "some sort of a model." Only two or three years ago did he decide to build a film on it — one about "this radicalization of the society in which we live today."

The premise inverts his previous feature, R.M.N., which examined majority intolerance toward outsiders. Fjord asks the reverse: what happens when conservatives become the minority in a liberal, progressive Scandinavian society?

"Actually, they tend to act more from the reflex of being a majority than to being more inclusive," Mungiu said of the progressive townspeople, "and I don't think this is the right signal, answer, feedback to send."

What does Mungiu blame for rising radicalization?

The director argues that authoritarian enforcement of progressive values over the past ten to fifteen years produced a counter-effect and boosted right-wing popularity.

"Instead of making the society more liberal, I think that, by trying to enforce them in a very authoritarian way, we rather created the countereffect," he said. "I don't think it's good to answer radicalization on the right wing with this kind of radicalization for other values."

He called on the educated, inclusive part of society to initiate dialogue: "Behave as an adult and don't position yourself with the same radicalism."

How does the film stay neutral?

Mungiu acknowledged the risk that Fjord could be misused as propaganda for either ideology, but insists his only possible position is that of moderator in a conversation nobody wants to have.

"If you make a film in which you take sides, that's just going to be propaganda for people who are already convinced that your ideas are good," he said, criticizing directors who stay "on the safe side of things" with clear good and bad characters. "They are not generating any kind of dialogue because they don't address the other side."

He rejects the word "challenging" outright: "This kind of cinema shouldn't be neither preachy nor didactic. I make the effort of having the form of the film as enjoyable as possible. It looks like a thriller."

How did he direct the actors?

Mungiu told his cast to separate their own views from their characters'. "If you have an ethical problem with supporting that point of view, you don't have to accept the part," he said. He brought the actors to sermons and conversations so they could interpret the family honestly.

He also warned audiences against siding with the family simply because of appealing casting: "If you are falling for the way they manipulate you in the film, that's your problem." He estimates 90% of viewers come to have their ideas confirmed, but credits the remaining percentage with being inclined to self-analysis.

The Cannes prize, he admits, made the conversation possible at all: "If we didn't have the chance to get the Palme d'Or, I don't know if we would be talking now. I think that this is what saved our ass."

He noted that some of the most radical verdicts — for and against the film — arrived at Cannes before the first screening. "How can we get on terms if you have firm opinions about something that you don't know yet?" he asked.

Mungiu contrasts Fjord with mainstream cinema that, in his view, resembles 1980s animation in its ideological balance, where "nobody feels offended and nobody feels challenged." Literature and film, he said, "are also designed and meant to make you think, consider, believe, doubt."

As for his own allegiance, the director asked for one message to be passed on: "I'm not defending any ideology in particular." With its October 9 release, the test now moves from Cannes partisans to the general public — and to whether the conversation Mungiu wants to trigger can happen beyond the festival bubble.