Director Cristian Mungiu follows up his film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days with a harrowing, unsentimental, but hugely sympathetic story of a tiny religious community's attempt to care for a damaged soul who comes into their midst. Voichita and Alina are young women who clung to one another during their days in a Romanian orphanage. Years later, Voichita has found refuge in God and belonging in her spiritual family at the New Hill Orthodox monastery. But Alina believes her only refuge is Voichita, and her belief, untethered by reason or rule, takes on a destructive power. The story bears the grim stamp of inevitability; what makes the film extraordinary is the care with which conventual life and thought are rendered. Its members are separated by varying degrees of wisdom, sophistication, and superstition, but they are bound by a wholehearted commitment to love. Which, of course, is no stay against disaster. (2012) — Matthew Lickona
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