Otilia and Găbiţa share the same room in a student dormitory. They are colleagues at the University in this small town in Romania, during the last years of communism.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days: Festival de Cannes Oficial Selection Competition

Otilia rents a room in a cheap hotel. In the afternoon, they are going to meet a certain Mr. Bebe. Găbiţa is pregnant, abortion is illegal and neither of them have passed through something like this before.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days belongs to a larger project called: Tales from the Golden Age – a subjective history of communism in Romania told through its urban legends.

The project's aim is to talk about that period with no direct reference to communism but only through different stories focused on personal options in a time of misfortunes that people had to live like normal times.

4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days is the first film of the series.

Notes from the director

The story:

The screenplay starts from the kind of personal experience that people usually donʼt share with others. Something unexpected happened with the people who came in contact with my story: once they heard it, they had a personal story of this kind to share.

All of a sudden, everybody had something to say about this topic. I was amazed to discover how common yet hidden such stories are. Talking to people, I learned the most horrible of stories. I didnʼt use them in the film – I just followed the story I knew best – but they helped me understood how widespread the phenomenon was.

The screenplay:

I wrote the first draft in July 2006. It was much longer than the final version – it had some 160 pages and described in more detail the morning of the girls in the student dorms. It also included the visit of Găbiţa's father – the only scene that was shot and dropped in the editing.

I decided to sacrifice a good scene - with a lot of hints regarding parental influence on the way the characters decide - in favor of narrative coherence. Meanwhile, Otilia had imposed herself with authority as the main character. I kept re-writing during the shooting, especially dialogues, but not only.

I always re-write scenes once I know the location and have read through the dialogue with the actors. I kept adding substance to the core of the film - the scenes with Mr. Bebe - and gave free rein to the thriller rhythm of the last part.

The historical context:

In 1966, a law banning abortion was imposed in Romania. The effect was immediate: up to the early seventies, there were several huge generations of children, a few times more numerous than the generations before 1966.

The average number of children in a classroom increased from 28 to 36. The number of classes in schools increased from 2 or 3 to 9 or 10. When I entered school, there were seven Cristians in my class – there were not enough names to go around. Women quickly started to resort to illegal abortions.

By the end of communism, reliable sources say that more than 500,000 women had died as a result. In that context, abortion lost any moral connotation and was rather perceived as an act of rebellion and resistance against the regime.

After 1989, one of the first measures taken in the free country was to legalize abortion again. The consequence was almost one million abortions in the first year – a number far greater than in any country in Europe. Even today, abortion is still used as a method of contraception in Romania, with more than 300, 000 cases being reported annually.