It's hard to think of a Palme d'Or winner in recent (or even not-so-recent) years that was as universally agreed-upon as Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," a shattering, formally immaculate study of illegal abortion in Communist Romania that remains the key work of the country's entire cinematic New Wave. That it's taken Mungiu five years to craft a follow-up feature -- though he made a strong contribution to the 2009 portmanteau film "Tales From the Golden Age" -- only increases the pressure on this study of two young women at an Orthodox convent. Reportedly inspired by a non-fiction account of a monk who died in an exorcism ritual, it promises to be suitably sobering stuff, but will it hit quite the same nerve as his breakthrough?

-Guy Lodge