Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Palm d’Or, on Sunday night for his film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”. Mungiu’s performance is unprecedented in Romanian film history: only veteran director Liviu Ciulei managed to get the Cannes award for best direction with “Padurea Spanzuratilor” in 1965.

Mungiu’s film will be presented for the first time in Romania at the Transylvania International Film Festival-TIFF.

“I bet on this move from the very beginning. I told all my friends it has huge chances of success. My only regret is that Ana Maria Marinca, without whom the film would not have been what it is, was not among the winners of the night, but I hope this will be fixed at TIFF”, Romanian film critic and TIFF director Mihai Chirilov told HotNews.ro.

He said the Cannes success was “a step forward for Romanian film making, a validation of a tendency, a confirmation at the highest level. But of course there’s always room for better”.

The story of the film takes place in Romania before 1989, in a totalitarian regime. The title tells the period that the main character, Gabita (actress Laura Vasiliu) let things happen before searching for somebody willing to perform an illegal abortion.

Otilia, her friend, helps Gabita find the necessary money for the procedure.

Mungiu’s film also won the FIPRESCI award granted by the International Film Critics Federation in Cannes.

This year’s festival also brought another important prize for Romanian film making: director Cristian Nemescu, killed in a car accident last year, received a post-mortem “Un certain regard” award for his unfinished film “California dreaming”. The same distinction went to another Romanian director in 2005: Cristian Puiu for “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”.