Quotes

I had the experience of working on a film for somebody else, on a foreign production. They were very nice people, but I discovered it is very difficult for me to have somebody else interfere with my film. I wouldn't like to work on anything unless I have complete control.

[on Beyond the Hills (2012)] I am speaking about people who are condemned from Moment 1. There's nothing much for them to do in life.

[on his creative process] In between films I have very long periods in which I am completely clueless about what I want to do next. I have no idea whatsoever where to start. I start having these ideas of maybe I don't know anything about cinema, that I am completely stupid and incapable of doing anything relevant. I'm not this happy, fortunate sort of guy who takes a shower, socialises and is then struck by an idea. I spend weeks and months in the office, thinking, even if I don't write anything. I read books, watch films, talk to people - it can be very frustrating but eventually a spark comes.[2015]

[on touring with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)] The Palme d'Or was a great thing but once I got back home, I realised the reality didn't match the expectation. There was a huge curiosity. People wanted to see the film but I couldn't screen it. I took advantage of this special moment in my life. I was able to fundraise a lot of money and rented equipment from Germany and did something that had been done in Romania forty years before, I toured the film, not in tiny villages where there was no cinema, but big towns where there was no cinema - we gathered more than 20,000 people in these screenings over 30 days in some 20 cities.[2015]

[on his biography] I never had a proper education about films. You have to place this in the context in which I lived. I lived in the 70s and 80s in Romania. I'm not from Bucharest. I'm not from the capital. I'm from a town of half a million inhabitants with a lot of universities [Iasi]. There were some seven cinemas, although not one is left today, but we didn't have a cinematheque. Later on in the 1980s, when I was a teenager, I had a more privileged relationship with cinema through VCRs. VCRs were like a goldmine to have at the end of the communist era. I started watching a lot of films and then showing them in private screenings and even translating them - but it was chaotic and unplanned. All of sudden this unexpected thing happened [the Romanian Revolution 1989]. Even if we were aware of what was happening in Eastern Germany and all the Eastern countries we couldn't figure out how it would happen in Romania. The system was so strong and the secret police were so powerful and had been in place for so long and the whole reality was so distorted. We were all listening to Radio Free Europe. We knew what was going on but it still it came as a surprise. I kept working in the press in my hometown because it was a very burning period and it was interesting time to be in the press. People were stopping you on the street, asking you to tell them the truth after years and years in which the press had been distorted. In four years of studying [in the 1990's at the film school in Bucharest] we never went beyond the 1940s. They didn't have any copies of the films we were studying - it was theoretical. The tutors had a wonderful energy and passion but if you don't watch the films it's impossible to understand what they're talking about I came out of [film] school with very little knowledge of cinema history. [Screendaily 2015]

[on directing English language films] I keep getting a lot of projects from the [United] States but I need to make sure I do it at the right time, so I rather think that I will someday find the right book or story and write it myself. I need to write what I do as a director. It's not like the most important thing for it to be an English-language film or an American film. To do a strong film there I would have to live there, because I am very attached to doing realistic films about what I observe. [2014]

[on his biography] I had to do something to avoid going into the army at eighteen, so I studied philosophy and then became a journalist and teacher in my hometown. After the fall of communism, I kept working for a few years but finally had no excuse and said if this is what I want to do I can do it now. So I moved to Bucharest and studied film, and moved up from there.[2014]

[on his films] ...all have some sort of social implication even if it's not direct and obvious. It sometimes speaks about the problems in society, but it's not a pattern that you are not always aware of when you are making it. After you make [several] films, you look back and see that these situations have layers that are about something. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) was mostly about abortion, but it was about freedom and at the same time was considered to be the best film about communism for the creating atmosphere that you could feel, which is very difficult to capture on film, while Beyond the Hills (2012) was mainly about religion, but also about the indifference you can have to people that are close to you.[2014]

In the end it takes so much from your life to make a film, it's a little bit like falling in love. It's happened to you before, and you know that you would like it to happen again and you know what kind of girl you like, but you can't really make it happen exactly when you want it or how you want it. You have to be prepared for it to happen, and when it happens it happens. [2014]

[on the Romanian New Wave] It expresses itself in a radical manner. It is not the subject that matters, it isn't the story, it is the way it is done. It's a new way of making films, a simpler way. Directly relating the experiences we have instead of just picking the kind of story that people expect. There are many stereotypes going around in film today. I don't feel I have to feed them.[2013]

[Masterclass in Doha, Qatar] Ask why you are making the film, for whom you are making it. Ask if the film matters to them and what kind of film you want to make. Unless you know the answers to these questions, you cannot advance. And once you have found the answers, you will find the precise tools to make the right filmmaking decision.[2015]

[on the Romanian New Wave] In the years following 2000, a new generation of filmmakers emerged, who had studied film after the fall of communism, and they had a clear penchant for realism. [2013]

It's important to keep on searching, to arrive on set with the idea that you don't know what the best way of doing things will be. If you are going in the right direction, the film speaks to you. It's more honest this way. Cinema is really a question of honesty.[2013]

[on 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)] The screenplay starts from the kind of personal experience that people usually don't share with others. It is the story of consequences that are more often untold, even hidden, but common to many. Above all it is an abortion story from a period of time when such an act was an act of protest against a regime which sought to impose discipline by banning abortion.[2007]

[Beyond the Hills (2012)] Working as a journalist, of course, had an influence because as you can see with the subject of this film, I've preserved this taste for very strong stories. As a journalist, you feel this would interest people, so I'm reading the newspapers everyday, just for my pleasure. But very often I find stories that are really interesting, so I'm just keeping them, lacing them together for the moment when I start writing. There's something else that helped me from my period working as a journalist - a style of storytelling, a style I first created in words. When I write, I don't make any comment. I never start with me seeing something. It's always about something happening. I describe what happens and then I preserve this style in the writing of screenplays and later on in the style of shooting.[2013]

[on Beyond the Hills (2012)] It speaks about a certain way of understanding religion, which I don't consider to be just local. Anybody understanding religion in an extreme way is the same for me. It's about ideology.[2013]

[on Graduation (2016)] There is anxiety when you feel guilty about the decisions you make: when not all the decisions you make are moral, when you are hiding the truth from others. You will have the illusion that people are following you, that your conscience is always behind you. This is what it means to take the wrong step into the world of compromise: a lot of aggression and anxiety. Compromise starts really early in Romania. There is always conflict when you accept compromise. And once it starts it is unstoppable. (...) If you tolerate your own compromise you will tolerate the compromise around you. You will lose the moral power to speak out, because deep inside you know you have done something that is not so moral. We all complain in Romania about the level of corruption without understanding that we are responsible for it. [2016]

[why he has never thought of leaving his country] I want to make films that are deep and truthful, about what I know. You can't understand the people in another country like you do those in your own country. An immigrant can never know or integrate into a culture [as well as a native], except after many years. So I must stay to make my films. [2016]

[on Graduation (2016)] We have lost ten percent of our most brilliant youth in the last decade. Parents want to send their children abroad. The top students are accepted abroad to study [just like the girl in the film] and go. It is a problem. It is a problem if all the trained and intelligent people leave the country. [2016]

[in defense of festivals like Cannes] If we can't preserve this, smaller films might disappear in a matter of a few years. It's really important to preserve the diversity in cinema. Commercial cinema is wonderful, but cinema wasn't born to produce commercial cinema alone. It's good to have voices and points of views... We need to make an effort to educate the audience. [2016]

[official statement as 'Cinéfondation' president] Value and originality have never achieved easy recognition in the cinema. And it's even harder to recognize the value and originality of very young directors. The Cinéfondation has always given young directors the help and recognition they needed at the very outset of their career, so that they could express themselves with courage and find their own voice. [March 2017]

I started as a filmmaker by wanting to be funny and surprising. Later on I discovered I also wanted to be true and sincere. Now I want to be more visual and emotional. [Berlinale Talents, 2004]

[press conference for Graduation (2016) at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival] I hope it's universal. People have asked me a lot of questions about that. I don't think it's a film on Romania only - I try to make films on human nature, moral dilemmas that people may encounter in a given point in their lives. I talk about people from my generation - this is one of the most important problems; you need to know how you're going to bring up your children, what ethical values you're going to give them. It's very important this, in Romania. You have to take a decision that's probably the most important decision you'll be taking for your children, you have to decide what you're going to do with your children, what advice to give them - to stay or to leave? We were born during the Communist era, we struggled, we fought to change things, but people say, "Well, how many generations should be sacrificed for a given country?" It's hard when you're talking to your children to find the right answer.

[press conference for R.M.N. (2022) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival] I just wanted to thank my colleagues for being with me on this quite difficult adventure. Once again we shot during wintertime but only this time we added several layers on top of the weather. We had very many people for the shoot, we had a child and we had animals and we had Covid. So we were really trying to see if we can still do the film in these conditions and I want to thank them for just being there and having their support to get to the end of this very, very difficult experience.

[Cannes press conference for R.M.N. (2022)] For me, in this film, Transylvania stands for something; that very distant place that you don't know much about, where there's a melting-pot of ethnic groups of people living together and I hope that the audience will get that it's not yet again a story about what happens in Romania and it's not just about these people - I didn't have the time to read the press - but whenever journalists just interpret that it's yet again another sombre painting of this country; well, it's not about that country, or not only about that country at all for me, and it's good to check your own elections in your own countries to see that we don't only talk about Romania. But of course things need to happen somewhere and for us they happen in Transylvania because Transylvania represents very well this territory which passed from one country to the other, where people had to live with people of different background and different religions. It was very interesting for us to scout in Transylvania and in every different village there are from three to six different churches and congregations - of course, all the villages are deserted now because everybody left - everybody works abroad, which makes things even more sad. But at the same time the culture, the civilisation of these people stayed, and it's impregnated in everything from habits to architecture and we were scouting a lot to find a village that won't contradict what we wanted to say, in the sense that this a true story that happened, which is also part of the inspiration for this film. I started by checking that village in particular, but we decided not to shoot there, to look for some other village and then we started checking out the ethnicity of the people in certain areas just to make sure that we speak about something which is correct and truthful and we came out with this village and I hope it stands a lot for what trying to live along together with the others means.

[Cannes press conference for R.M.N. (2022), asked what the film's ending means] It's about whatever you will come up with after you sleep at night......there's something about cinema and there's something about film. Sometimes it's not good to put too much into words what the film is about. Because words are reducing the sense to just something very precise. And this is why we do cinema - if I could just write a telegram and send it to you what this is about, I would, but it's cinema. And it's way more complex than this. All those things that you said are part of my intentions; there are a lot of other things as well. But it's too early yet - we had a screening yesterday - I'll wait for the press to help me out with the ending, a few more weeks, and then eventually when I will start coming from one country to the other to explain what I wanted, I will be more specific.

[2023 interview] Romania is still one of the countries with the most positive attitude to EU membership. They understand the benefits because freedom of movement made a huge difference. But people struggle to understand that there are people elsewhere in the world who are having the same problems we had 20 years ago. It's not reasonable to expect to be treated well when you travel west and then treat people who come from further east like shit. Our education taught us to love the west: we know its history, its geography, and we assumed that the west cared what happened here too. But when communism collapsed, we found out that our homelands is a hazy part of the continent that western Europeans don't care that much about. They all think we speak Russian and that it's freezing cold here. We're good enough to go over there to clean toilets and pick up food, but people look right through you and don't consider you as individuals. These nationalistic and populist groups exploit that.

[2023 interview] To be honest, I am trying to understand where cinema is going. I cannot just keep on making movies until I understand if people still want to watch them in theatres or not, and if they want to watch content or want to watch films, and if they want to be entertained or also want to be challenged. I think the amount of people who wish to spend a couple of hours in a cinema in which they don't just relax but also use their minds is shrinking to a very small minority. And the only thing that we can use digital platforms for is to coagulate these scattered people into a small group that could be relevant.

[press conference for Fjord (2026) at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival] I allow some years to pass between this moment when I read a piece of news and the moment when I decide to make a film about it. Because I never re-enact what has happened. I just like starting from a real story to speak about something that I consider to be important, happening in our society today. And I need a while for that "wowness" of the news to dissipate before I make the film. So for this case, I read the first articles about such situations I would say some ten years ago, and I started collecting such situations and finally I started documenting these cases four years ago when I went to Norway and I started talking to these people, the people involved in those situations. So finally, when I decided to write down the screenplay, which was two years ago, I had a lot of information and a lot of details from a lot of such cases. And even if the film follows closely one of the cases, it has information and details from all the cases that I've been studying and I think that even it's a fictional film, most of the details which are on the judicial side are coming from this documentation that I've been doing.