4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Both films are about those who stay behind after a world is rewritten — one in 1987 Romania, the other in post-revolution 1960s Cuba. Nearly four decades and two political systems apart, the camera settles on the same predicament: when everything changes, do you stay or leave? They are paired today not for a holiday but for that question, which has no clean answer.

1987年，布加勒斯特。两名同住的女大学生，其中一个刚刚发现自己怀孕。在那个堕胎仍属刑事犯罪的年代，她们约了一位陌生男子，在一家旅馆的房间里，试图悄悄解决这场危机。 影片几乎没有离开过她们。镜头跟着她们在走廊、前台、房间之间移动，把紧张收进日常空间的角落——你看得清每一件家具，却读不出接下来会发生什么。这是一部关于友谊、代价与沉默的电影，它不解释，也不替任何人开脱。

At the 2007 Cannes Film Festival it became the first Romanian film to win the Palme d'Or, and in effect put the Romanian New Wave on the world map. Mungiu strips away music, flashbacks, and any device that would digest emotion for the viewer: 113 minutes become a single held breath. Its weight comes from restraint. The director lays the entire moral grey zone before you and hands the judgement back entirely — you are told neither who is victim nor who is perpetrator, because inside that hotel room the boundaries were never clear. That refusal of an exit is exactly why it is studied again and again.