The Ministry of Culture on Tuesday congratulated director Cristian Mungiu, actors Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, as well as the entire artistic and technical team of the film 'Fjord' for the 'remarkable performance' and the enthusiastic reception of the audience present at the Cannes Film Festival.

'Some films don't end with the end credits. They stay with you. They disturb your certainties. They raise questions. They force you to look more closely at the world and the people around you. This is what happened at Cannes, where 'Fjord', the new film by Cristian Mungiu, was greeted with 12 minutes of uninterrupted applause, one of the strongest reactions of this edition of the festival. (...) The Ministry of Culture congratulates director Cristian Mungiu, actors Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, as well as the entire artistic and technical team of the film 'Fjord' for this remarkable performance. Romanian film goes far when it has the courage to tell the truth', reads the Ministry of Culture's Facebook post.

The film tells the story of a Romanian-Norwegian couple, played by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, who move near a fjord and discover the difficulty of understanding someone who thinks differently. It is a story about polarization, about the inability to dialogue, about what separates us and what still holds us together.

Cristian Mungiu returns to the official competition at Cannes with the same artistic courage that brought him the Palme d'Or in 2007, the award for best screenplay in 2012 and the award for best director in 2016. The film's financiers include the National Center of Cinematography / Romanian Film Centre.

'Fjord' is one of the 22 films competing for the festival's grand prize, which will be awarded on May 23.

Through his latest feature film, 'Fjord,' selected in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, Cristian Mungiu questions the abuses committed in the name of progressive ideologies, without fear of sparking debate. 'Cinema must remain polemical,' declared the Romanian director, who won the Palme d'Or in 2007.

'It seems to me that, in cinema, we have begun to lose a little of the freedom to truly express what we think. There are too many polite films that confirm to you that the ideology of the day is the correct one, and that is not what cinema should do,' he said.

In 'Fjord', the Romanian filmmaker sets his story in Norway, where a very religious evangelical couple (Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) settles down with their five children and, at first, seems to be integrating without any problems into a society that proclaims its tolerance and respect for minorities.

But everything comes to a sudden halt when suspicions of domestic violence against the children arise. The Norwegian authorities begin to look critically at the two spouses, question their strict upbringing, which excludes YouTube and smartphones, and criticize their religious faith.

Tensions rise until a placement procedure is triggered that targets the children, including the youngest of the siblings, a newborn who was still breastfed by his mother.

Cristian Mungiu refuses to take the side of the conservative camp, he who won the Palme d'Or trophy almost 20 years ago with '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days', a film that denounced the criminalization of abortion in communist Romania.

Inspired by true events, the film 'Fjord' resonates with the personal story of the 58-year-old Romanian filmmaker, who grew up in Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who ruled for decades (1967-1989) in the name of a communism that promised emancipation but, in fact, oppressed the Romanian people.

'I grew up under a regime that believed it knew better than us, the citizens, what we needed,' recalls Cristian Mungiu. 'We thought this stopped with the fall of communism, but today we discover that it can happen, even with the best intentions, in democratic societies,' he added.

Cristian Mungiu, however, does not see his new film as a criticism of current progressivism, but as a reflection on the growing polarization in our societies, reports AFP.AGERPRES(RO - writing by: Daniel Popescu; EN - writing by: Bogdan Gabaroi)