Matthias runs into the night after a he violently reacts to a racist slur. His prodigal return to hometown reunites him with an old flame, Csilla, who works for a local bread factory that has trouble recruiting locals at minimum wage. When the factory decides to bring in a couple of hard-working foreigners, the small village turns into a hotbed for intolerance and social division. Set in the striking landscapes of the Transylvanian mountains, Cristian Mungiu’s chilly, intelligent social drama is like a huge mosaic that takes time to pick the pieces and patiently put them together to complete the big picture. There are multiple layers of paradox in the film, such as the bears that nobody wants around but are valuable from an ecological point of view, the villagers who want to make money working abroad but refuse to let any outsiders in, and the guy who teaches his eight-year-old son about survival of the fittest with a rifle. The bigotry and fear derived from the unknown culminates at the seventeen-minute long take of the town hall meeting, where the ridiculously xenophobic dialogues that the villagers exchange are frighteningly familiar. (Karen PARK)