Cristian Mungiu lands European Film Academy nomination

Romanian film director Cristian Mungiu was nominated for the European Film Awards (EFA) 2012, in the ” best screenplay” category for his film ”Beyond the Hills”, according to the European Film Academy official website. The EFA awards nominations were announced at the Seville European film Festival on Saturday. The EFA Awards Gala, which celebrates 25 years this year, will be held in Malta on December 1. Cristian Mungiu will compete in the category with Michael Haneke (“Amour”), Tobias Lindholm and Thomas Vinterberg (“Jagten/The Hunt”), Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (“Intouchables”) and Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza (“Carnage”).

Every year, the various activities of the European Film Academy culminate in the ceremony of the European Film Awards which are presented jointly with EFA Productions gGmbH. In a total of 17 categories, among them European Film, European Director, European Actress and European Actor, the European Film Awards annually honors achievements in European cinema.

About “Beyond the Hills” movie

The Guardian’s review dubbed Mungiu’s film as “a brilliant, scary portrayal of irrationality and fear in Europe’s dark heart”, adding that Cristian Mungiu has given “a captivating tragi-comedy of sexual hysteria and material want. This long movie is played out in a kind of real time, a mysterious secular passion play; Mungiu apparently based the action on the reportage of the BBC World Service’s Bucharest bureau chief Tatiana Niculescu Bran who wrote about a case in 2005, where a novice died after being subjected to an exorcism in Romania’s Tanacu monastery: an irrational horror at the heart of 21st-century Europe.”