The first official trailer is now available for writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills.  The Romanian drama centers on two best friends who grew up together in an orphanage.  When one of the women seeks refuge in a convent and refuses to leave, their predicament grows ever darker and more disturbing.

Mungiu, who was inspired by the non-fiction accounts of demonic possession in the novels of Tatiana Niculescu Bran, won the award for Best Screenplay at Cannes 2012 and received a nomination for the festival’s top honor, the Palme d’Or.  Starring the Cannes 2012 winners for Best Actress Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur, Beyond the Hills opens in limited release on March 8th.  Hit the jump to watch the new trailer.

Another Cannes, another win for Michael Haneke.  Haneke won the Grand Jury Prize in for The Piano Teacher in 2001, Best Director for Caché in 2005, and the festival’s top honor, the Palme d’Or, for The White Ribbon in 2009.  With no brass ring left, Haneke settled for another Palme D’Or at this year’s fest for his typically harrowing tale of elderly marriage, Amour (aka Love).  Haneke is now the eighth director to win Best Film twice*, joining the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and the Daredenne brothers.

Beyond the Hills was the only film to win multiple awards, earning both Best Screenplay (by writer/director Cristian Mungiu) and a tie for Best Actress between co-stars Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur.  The only winner I can guarantee we Americans will be able to see anytime soon is Beasts of the Southern Wild, which is set for release on June 27 after writer/director Benh Zeitlin won the Caméra d’or (Best First Feature).  The jury also awarded Reality, The Angels’ Share, Post Tenebras Lux, and The Hunt.  Hit the jump for the full list of award winners.

It’s been a bit of a wait for the follow up to Cristian Mungiu‘s terrific 2007 feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, but it looks like a festival release for his next film is on the horizon.  Deadline reports that Wild Bunch has reteamed with Mungiu for the new film, which is “set in an Orthodox convent in Romania,” and “centers on a young woman’s descent into madness, her subsequent exorcism and the police investigation it sparks.”  I’m sick to death of exorcism movies, but I’ll make an exception for Mungiu.  Wild Bunch’s Vincent Maraval says that the movie “has elements of 4 Months, but with a much more intense twist.”  Hopefully, that twist does not involve sending the audience to a website.

Pre-sales on the untitled film will go down in Berlin, with a possible release at Cannes in May.  Wild Bunch is also planning to submit Rufus Norris‘ Broken, which centers on “the father of an 11-year old girl living in North London who witnesses a violent attack which changes the way she looks at the world around her.”  The film stars Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy, Rory Kinnear, and Bill Milner.