“… a thoroughgoing masterpiece” – rogerebert.com

TORONTO – Internationally acclaimed director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) returns with a powerful and universal study about the imprecision of parenthood, the relativity of truth and the ambiguity of compromise, revealed by a father-daughter relationship.

GRADUATION had its world premiere last year at Cannes, and the Canadian premiere at TIFF 2016, where it played to high acclaim. It returns to Toronto for its theatrical premiere, June 2, at TIFF Bell Lightbox.

Synopsis:
Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni), a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza (Maria Dragus) with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study and live abroad. His plan is close to succeeding – Eliza has won a scholarship to study psychology in the UK. She just has to pass her final exams – a formality for such a good student. On the day before her first written exam, Eliza is assaulted in an attack that could jeopardize her entire future. Now Romeo has to make a decision. There are ways of solving the situation, but none of them using the principles he, as a father, has taught his daughter.

“The essence of storytelling for such a film does not reside in it clarifying all its themes or meanings, but in managing not to limit them too much,” says director Mungiu. “The language is always abstract, the communication is always imprecise, details sometimes convey as much content as the overall story. The specificity of cinema lies precisely in those details that can only be perceived when watching the film: a non-translatable attitude, an uncertain feeling, an opaque state of mind – things that cannot be put into words.”