BBC Culture has made a list of the greatest 100 films of the 21st Century and a Romanian movie is on it.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days/ 4 Luni, 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile, the 2007 film directed by Romanian Cristian Mungiu, is 15th in the ranking.

The movie tells the story of a young woman seeking to have an abortion in 1980s communist Romania, which was illegal at that time.

Mungiu, 48, is one of the best-known Romanian directors. Back in 2007, this movie brought him the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, while another one of his movies, Beyond the Hill/ Dupa Dealuri, won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes in 2012.

His latest feature film Graduation/Bacalaureat was also a big hit. It brought Mungiu his third award at Cannes - Best Director.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is the best film of the 21st Century, according to BBC Culture’s list. In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-wai, ranks second, followed by Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.

The top 10 is completed by Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), Yi Yi: A One and A Two (Edward Yang, 2000), A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011), and No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007). Find the entire list here.

The ranking has been made based on the choices of 177 film critics from around the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZisE16JBUMA

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: IMDB)