We use cookies to personalize content and ads and to analyze our traffic and improve our service a 23-year-old Romanian woman raised in an abusive orphanage Cornici was planning to immigrate to Germany She died at the monastery a few weeks after her arrival said to “banish the devil,” were read by a resident priest with alleged healing powers Cornici’s behavior had become increasingly confrontational Medical authorities diagnosed her as schizophrenic; the monastery viewed her as “possessed.” Treated as a case of exorcism by the local press and abroad what became known as the Tanacu incident created a furor in a country which has witnessed a resurgence of the Orthodox church in the past 20 years since the fall of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Communism The officiating priest and four nuns were summarily arrested and subsequently tried and sentenced to jail A more thorough investigation into the exact goings-on at the monastery prior to this tragedy by Tatiana Niculescu Bran a former senior editor of the BBC’s Bucharest bureau led to the publication of her two non-fiction novels— Deadly Confession  They are the books that inspired Cristian Mungiu’s film Beyond the Hills  which premiered in competition at Cannes this year winning Best Screenplay and Best Actress for its two superb leads It’s also Romania’s entry for foreign-language film at the Oscars Mungiu was in town for a New York Film Festival screening in October; I spoke to him in a break-out room at IFC which will release the film theatrically in February Mungiu explores the broader concerns that eventually led him to make a dramatic film about the Tanacu incident: eschewing the sensationalist aspects of the case but taking his cue from Tatiana Bran’s nonjudgmental account of the events It’s in fact Mungiu’s second story about an intense relationship between two young women; the first was the riveting and unsettling 4 Months which documented a critical 24 hours in a student’s quest for an illegal abortion for her roommate 4 Months earned him the Palme d’Or in 2007 the first Romanian feature to win the award observational approach; it draws its narrative momentum from a nimble script with crisp racy dialogue that’s adept at nailing fluctuating and conflicting emotions The screenplay (his own) is also well grounded in the physical and economic realities of the local community the other institutions with which the monastery’s inhabitants interact—the orphanage My interest in Romanian cinema was sparked in the early ’90s by Lucian Pintilié’s The Oak  the revolutionary Romanian director plays a hidden role in the genesis of Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills  Liza Béar You were saying that Lucian Pintilié Cristian Mungiu I was saying that for a while Lucian Pintilié wanted to make a film based on the 2005 Tanacu incident and we were all expecting to watch the film he gave up the project and decided the last film he would make in his life would be about Chekhov because I was really attracted by the story I decided that it would be okay for me to make a film about it CM We met a couple of times but I can’t say I know him well He moved back to Romania right after the fall of Communism in 1989 and has been living here for the last 23 years He had been forced to work in exile because the Communist regime wanted him to leave and let them be LB I noticed that you and two of your actors were born in the same place CM It’s a university town with 400,000 inhabitants and with a lot of universities But it’s not only the three of us who were born there when I cast the film I wasn’t aware that many of the actors were also born in Iași And I wondered why I always end up choosing people from that region It has something to do with their accent and with the way actors deliver their lines The dialogue is spoken with the accent of my hometown both dropping letters from words and running syllables together LB It sounds a bit like Cuban Spanish compared to Castilian Spanish this accent mentally places the action in mid-Moldova which people think of as an impoverished region with very simple people of very little education And it’s much more believable that a story involving a lot of voodoo belief could happen there and not someplace else CM My hometown is in the Northeast; where the story is set is a little further south I couldn’t shoot the film in Tanacu; I scouted there but I needed something closer to Bucharest I couldn’t travel 1,200 kilometers away from Bucharest the laboratories—we shot on 35-mm film—are in Bucharest I ended up finding a place that looked a lot like Tanacu 100 kilometers away and that’s why the title is Beyond the Hills In Romanian we say that there’s anger hidden in still water and this one won Best Screenplay and Best Actress for the two leads Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan at Cannes this year or learn by working on other people’s films CM First I studied languages at one of the universities in my hometown I was an English teacher and worked as a journalist And then I moved to Bucharest and studied film there for four years; we had only one film school But while I was studying film in Bucharest I was also working for the American and French films that were being shot there So I was able to see for myself how things work on the set in practice And I was lucky that as soon as I graduated CM It was a new law regulating cinema production so financing films from that moment on—this was 1997—became more transparent you get half the money immediately; you look for the rest and it wasn’t easy to get this kind of funding So I was able to work immediately after film school I didn’t have to do anything else but make short films and then my first feature Of course you learn certain things in film school and others from being on film sets But most of the important things you learn by making films For me it was important to read feedback about what I did what people liked about my short films and my first feature; this feedback helped me a lot see my cinema compared to what other people were doing Little by little it helped me create a point of view and an understanding of cinema LB What kinds of films did you work on that were being shot in Romania CM The most interesting films were the French films That was a period piece set in Romania during the First World War—a very long and complicated film It helped me lose the complexes you have as a beginner And being on the set you realize it’s not so different from what you imagined I started as a runner and ended up the shoot as a second AD So I learned a different job which helped me a lot later on because I produce my own films; I schedule my own films; I pretty much do the work of the AD myself that experience helps me a lot with organizing But all that has nothing to do with being a director But at the same time understanding what cinema is about is a very individual process of thinking and finding out what’s specific to this art What are the means that you use as a filmmaker How can you use these in an honest and decent way and not abuse them How can you work without becoming manipulative It’s so easy to seduce an audience and to generate all kinds of emotions using the right music at the right moment when you decide that this manipulation is immoral then you have to replace it with a different kind of film language whether it’s a two-minute scene or even a five-minute or twelve-minute scene involving not just one or two characters but a large group—everything needs to be absolutely precise a friend of mine was Emir Kusturica’s personal assistant He got fired because he wanted to do an 11-minute take and the studio didn’t want that CM This is exactly why I don’t want to work in the US How could the way in which we work match people’s expectations here LB Did you grow up in a secular family or a religious one CM I grew up in a family of easy-going intellectuals My parents considered that I should decide my position on religion for myself But they never indicated which direction I should take CM I have a sister who played a very important role in my life And she was experiencing things before me and feeding me what’s important She was very gifted artistically and wrote drama for the theater at one point She was a journalist before I was and brought me to the same newspaper And later on she became a very important public figure in Romania She still believes it’s possible to change that country CM I think she’s the last one who believes this I live two blocks from La Mama Theater in the East Village but in 2007 I was busy working on a book so I totally missed Deadly Confession Tatiana Nicolescu Bran had adapted the play from her first book about the Tanacu incident and you met her in New York at the time of the play I was in New York for the screening of 4 Months LB I wonder—did you ever consider co-writing the screenplay with her Or did she ever want to write the script herself it was the period when everyone still thought Pintilié was going to make the film We were just two people interested in the same public story And I was interested in Andrei Serban’s point of view which was actually very close to Tatiana’s books I found out that Pintilié wasn’t going to make the film I ran into Tatiana in Bucharest in early 2011 and she gave me another book that she’d just finished Somehow we started discussing the Tanacu project again I write my own screenplays and I need to advance little by little in the story to be able to “see” the film It’s very difficult for me to work with somebody else So I never considered working with her as a screenwriter or rather a workable version of it—I wrote several versions—I gave her that version to read CM Twice the length that you need to have for a film But I felt that I could make the film once I decided to free myself of the real story as I understood it from the books and the newspapers LB Do you feel Tatiana Bran’s books are “the real story” although she wasn’t there All you can do is to be honest with the information that you discover “This is what happened.” A book is already an interpretation of reality LB So what was her response to your first long draft I think she was okay with the fact that I shared her perspective on the story by not taking sides and not condemning any of the parties involved What I wanted to do in the film was indicate more important issues I felt were implicit in the story but not so present in the books It looked like an unfortunate accident that took place in a region where people are very poor in the context of a very bad set of circumstances For me it was important to speak more generally about values Love was the motor that I introduced into the script to trigger events The strong relationship that you see between the girls in the film never existed but there was no sexually charged moment in the behavior of this girl when her friend was trying to help her I saw a little bit of footage of the real person who is the Voichiţa character in the film very simpleminded girl who was convinced that her friend was possessed Does she have any elements of the real person most of the events in the film correspond pretty much to what happened in reality Alina’s character in the film is very different The real person may have been mentally ill LB I had a strong response to the film because it seemed to be very much about the individual and the institution—which is a subject that interests me a lot I felt that your Alina was a rebel in an institutional context where morals are corrupted She struck me as someone driven to the edge by the strictures of the environment given the strength of her attachment to her friend—you don’t mind me saying all this I like it when people don’t ask for an interpretation and I don’t believe that mine is the best one it seems that initially Voichiţa is in denial of the girls’ earlier relationship in the orphanage while Alina is so obsessed with Voichiţa that she asks her if she fucks the priest She tells the other nuns that she and Alina were “just friends.” I spent a lot of time in writing the screenplay trying to keep a balance CM Between love and friendship and affection Affection is the thing that bound them together and not necessarily a physical relationship being able to abandon yourself in the arms of the other LB Voichiţa tells the nuns that Alina had protected her against physical abuse in the orphanage “Did Alina want anything in return?” It’s a great line I also wanted to make Alina be as you describe her somebody that could be regarded as perfectly sane but just not conventional; a rebel Yet for some people she is clearly possessed You have information in the screenplay that allows you to choose whatever emphasis you want The film is seen in very different ways depending on the values that someone watching brings to it I had a sort of heavier question though I love the way this dialogue is going But did your experience of working as a journalist contribute to your development as a writer-director but we never know precisely what in our development made us what we are today LB And Tatiana Niculescu Bran worked for the BBC and had a high position in the World Service So I wondered whether this stress on balance— CM There are two things that influenced me a lot I kept a habit of reading newspapers every day It’s what I do when I have a little bit of time at times you will run across a powerful story And I kept a taste for this kind of story as an inspiration for my films The other thing which influenced me is that in writing for publication I created my own style A way of structuring the information in a certain order and of using words in a very descriptive way to let people witness the situation that I was describing without interpreting it Later on I moved this style into filmmaking into the way of organizing the story elements I don’t come closer to show you what’s more important I try to set up the scene as if you are witnessing the whole situation yourself and it’s up to you to decide what’s more important in that shot that must mean a really good person behind the handheld camera Moldova is an imprecise term because it refers also to a part of Romania called Moldova Half of it was chopped off Romania after the Second World War and became the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova We started working together in 1994 or ’95 CM We shot with a special Arriflex that we rented in Austria But lighter means it’s only 30 kilos instead of 45 kilos Just imagine—he shoots the whole film with his camera on his body There’s a brace and a harness with an L-shaped arm and a small video screen; there’s a connecting cable and the camera hangs in front of him But as you can imagine this is very difficult you can’t shoot with an HD camera because that freezes at minus 5 degrees So the focus puller needs to take this into account We had a multitude of technical problems working in the snow LB And the actors have to wait in the cold CM Another important thing is that when you work like this especially if you stage a very dynamic situation People have to run around and squeeze through doors My great pleasure is to show as much as possible—360 degrees of the scene—which means the whole crew needs to be behind the camera all the time and moving with the shot There are a lot of cables—it’s very complicated LB And you had to get it done before the winter set in LB And the Tanacu monastery was already closed I decided to build a set for the first time in my filmmaking career because I knew it wouldn’t be possible to shoot in a real monastery The Orthodox Church would never have given me permission Also because I learned quite early on that many of the actors and the crew that I was working with were religious people I never wanted them to feel this extra burden of working in a place that’s sacred for them Therefore I decided that I would build everything I went to Tanacu just to see what the real place was like It gave us a bit of feeling for the atmosphere of the place They never had the money to paint the church In the end I decided not to make a set that looks like the real Tanacu church because the screenplay was getting to be quite fictional My set was closer to what I imagined when I was writing What I did was to take some children’s modeling clay and I created the set in the office for my production designer we have it precisely the way I imagined it LB I read in the New York Times that there was a big real estate boom in Romania Has there really been a push back to institutional religion CM During the Communist period religion was not encouraged But somehow as soon as Communism collapsed people felt that they could embrace religion and the church as an institution once more I think they built some 4,000 new churches in the last 23 years LB And were these all Orthodox churches or different denominations which brings the total to about 20,000 churches in Romania for a population of 20 million—in a country where we have only 447 hospitals and where three schools close every day CM If you have so many churches and such a religious population as Romanians declare themselves to be—in polls declare themselves to be not only religious but practitioners—then you ask yourself why is there so much hatred in a society that claims to be religious If the real values of Christianity were properly transmitted you would expect to see a much more caring population with shared values LB So you’re not at all cynical then about institutions CM I’m always trying to understand how things happen And I think a story like Tanacu should be used as a good opportunity to speak about things that a film can’t speak about But it gives us the chance to speak about more important matters like the role of religion in today’s society and how it influences people Do they succeed in conveying some important Christian values or do they spend too much time focusing on rituals everybody seems to be very particular about rituals while not understanding the essence of what Christianity is about The film speaks a lot about indifference in society today I don’t think you should see so much indifference and individualism in a society that claims to be so religious The whispers started in April in the mind of the 23-year-old nun In the heart of an Orthodox convent in Romania's impoverished northeast Maricica Irina Cornici believed she heard the devil talking to her a monk and four nuns tried a different method: exorcism gagged with a towel and left in a dank room at the convent for three days without food where she died of suffocation and dehydration The case has stunned this impoverished nation where rural youths have flocked to Orthodox monasteries and convents for spiritual help or food and shelter Polls show the Orthodox Church to be the nation's most trusted institution Cornici was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the northeast city of Vaslui "She thought the devil was talking to her and told her that she was a sinful person," said Dr and she was probably having her first episode." The nun was given medication and released on April 20 to the care of the Holy Trinity convent in the nearby village of Tanacu an isolated community of about 1,000 people in a hilly area cultivated with vineyards and corn a 29-year-old red-bearded monk who served as the convent's priest and allegedly led the exorcism told the media he was trying to take devils out of the nun He said she had to be restrained because she was violent and that she refused to drink holy water Corogeanu and the four nuns were charged with aggravated murder on Wednesday in Cornici's death after testifying for 11 hours to prosecutors The monk said Friday outside the courtroom that he and the nuns were innocent and blamed media pressure for their arrests His lawyer has asked for the case to be moved to a different location citing the intense media and public scrutiny in the area Romania's Supreme Court is expected to rule on a location for the trial "I am scared that if I went to the monastery they would crucify me a 52-year-old former welder who suffers from epilepsy and said he was hospitalized with Cornici Others said the prosecutors were swayed by the public pressure and went too far by charging the suspects with aggravated murder and that a lesser charge of manslaughter would have been more appropriate "Aggravated murder implies intention and committing the crime with intentional sadism," said Aurelian Pavelescu a lawyer and member of Romania's parliament "But they believed they were helping the woman that they were curing her from her pains." her relatives demanded justice for the young woman who they said joined the convent just days before she was admitted to the hospital her ankles and her stomach," said her aunt marked with a simple wooden cross with the words "Sister Irina" scribbled on it Those who allegedly killed her "should all be crucified like her." when he baptized their godson at the convent a wooden building with a metal roof that overlooks a rolling hill "He held a beautiful service," said Petrica Pintilie A nearby sign warns that no men are allowed in after 4 p.m and that only Orthodox believers who are properly dressed can enter "Here we only talk to God and we sing with the angels in silence and with much prayer," says another sign posted on the convent's white fence The Orthodox Church has strongly condemned the exorcism ritual in Tanacu as "abominable." It has banned Corogeanu from the priesthood and excluded the four nuns from the church Orthodox monasteries and convents have flourished in Romania since the 1989 fall of Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal communist regime The Tanacu convent was built in 2001 by a private donor and had not yet been sanctified by the church Cornici's death and the revelation that Corogeanu was ordained as a priest without having finished his theological studies have prompted the church to impose stricter rules for entering monasteries that the Catholic Church updated its definitions of demonic possession vs This may all sound absurd and unbelievable, in and of itself, and it may seem ridiculous that exorcisms still exist at all. No matter how exorcisms have been dramatized for any number of  films, the Church has very specific procedural guidelines for how to perform an exorcism, as outlined on Catholic.org The case made news throughout Europe, to the point whera BBC reporter Tatiana Niculescu Bran wrote two non-fiction books around Corcini: Confession at Tanacu (2006), and The Book of Judges (2007). The books and Corcini's story would go on to inspire the 2012 movie Beyond the Hills Cornici had exhibited a history of mental health problems and struggling with her own sexual leanings had never received a single bit of training regarding mental health.