Directed by Cristian Mungiu • 2012 • Romania
Starring Cristina Flutur, Cosmina Stratan
With this arresting drama based on notorious real-life events, Cristian Mungiu mounts a complex inquiry into faith, fanaticism, and indifference. At a desolate Romanian monastery, a young novice nun, Voichita (Cosmina Stratan), reunites with her former companion Alina (Cristina Flutur), who plans to take her to Germany. But Voichita proves unwilling to abandon her calling, and Alina becomes increasingly desperate to reclaim her devotion, putting the outsider at odds with the monastery's ascetic priest, and precipitating a painfully misguided, brutal attempt to save her soul. A naturalistic tragedy with the dark force of a folktale, anchored by the fraught dynamic between cinema newcomers Flutur and Stratan (who shared the best actress prize at Cannes), BEYOND THE HILLS bears powerful witness to individuals at cross-purposes and institutions ill-equipped to help those most in need.
Up Next in 21st Century Cinema
-
Phoenix
Directed by Christian Petzold • 2014 • Germany
Starring Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina KunzendorfThis evocative and haunting drama, set in rubble-strewn Berlin in 1945, is like no other film about post-World War II Jewish-German identity. After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer (Ni...
-
A Master Builder
Directed by Jonathan Demme • 2014 • United States
Starring Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, Lisa JoyceTwenty years after their brilliant cinema-theater experiment VANYA ON 42ND STREET, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory reunited to produce another idiosyncratic film version of a classic play, this t...
-
Dheepan
Directed by Jacques Audiard • 2015 • France
Starring Antonythasan Jesuthasan, Kalieaswari Srinivasan, Claudine VinasithambyWith this Palme d’Or–winning drama, which deftly combines seemingly disparate genres, French filmmaker Jacques Audiard cemented his status as a titan of contemporary world ...
