Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days “manages to deal with abortion without advocating any stance other than compassion,” writes Times Online critic Kevin Maher. “It illustrates what happens when a woman’s right to choose her biological destiny is removed, and yet it also shows a picture of abortion that would please the most adamant pro-lifer.”

And yet, as I wrote last summer, the likelihood of any American right-to-lifers seeing this movie is next to nil. Their commitment to stopping abortion is sincere, but it pales next to their xenophobia. I suspect that most conservative Americans would rather jump into a raging volcano than see 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days.
The right-to-choose and pro-life viewpoints in Mungiu’s film “cancel each other out, leaving a moving portrait of two lonely women who bond in an unforgiving regime,” Maher writes.
“It’s very difficult to explain why the film moves so many people,’ says Mungiu, who shot the movie in 2006 for 600,000 euros. ‘But I honestly believe that it has a soul. As soon as we finished editing it we knew that we had something strong, emotional and balanced. It is a film that speaks about something important without ever being preachy.”