Director Cristian Mungiu, this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or for Fjord, is a guest of the Festival La Rochelle Cinema (FEMA), which will present a retrospective covering his complete filmography, from Occident to R.M.N..
The filmmaker returns to La Rochelle nearly twenty years after winning his first Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which opened FEMA 2007.
The public will have the opportunity to discover or rediscover nine feature films and all of his short films, but also titles not previously screened in France, namely Traffic (2024), directed by Teodora Ana Mihai and co-written by Cristian Mungiu, and Fjord (2026), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
The event, which runs from June 26 to July 4, will also host the exhibition The Biography of a Storyteller, featuring photographs by Mungiu. The exhibition will be on view throughout the festival at the Dames Blanches Chapel and the Chain Tower in La Rochelle. It is organized in partnership with the Un Week End à l’Est festival, the City of La Rochelle, the National Monuments Centre, and in collaboration with Le Pacte.
Mungiu will be present at FEMA La Rochelle between June 27 and July 1. He will attend various Q&A sessions with the public, but also industry events.
The Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) in Paris said it was supporting the participation of the filmmaker at FEMA La Rochelle as part of ICR’s “strategy to enhance the international visibility of Romanian cinema, promote European co-productions, and support the Oscar campaign for Fjord.”
Besides the 2026 Palme d’Or, Fjord won four other major awards: the François Chalais Award, the Ecumenical Jury Prize, the Prix de la Citoyenneté, and the FIPRESCI Prize. An international co-production between Romania, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, supported by Eurimages and Creative Europe MEDIA, the film stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve.
(Photo: Cristian Radu Nema, courtesy of ICR)
simona@romania-insider.com
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