In a small town in Transylvania, Romania, Romeo, a doctor, has only one wish for his teenage daughter Eliza: that she obtain a scholarship to study in England and have a better life. As she prepares to pass her secondary school exams, Eliza is assaulted by an unknown man who tries to rape her. Because he refuses to let his daughter miss her exams due to of this experience, Romeo ignores his own principles to guarantee her success...

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Cristian Mungiu has become a regular at the Cannes Film Festival: Occident was shown at the Directors' Fortnight; 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days won the Golden Palm; his two leads both won Best Actress for Beyond the Hills. And now Best Director for Graduation, which again draws a complex and harsh portrait of his home country. Mungiu uses ordinary corruption and evil to recount the merciless fall of an honest man who forgets his principles for reasons he considers noble. Simply, soberly, with great reservation, the movie watches its characters move and founder, with a captivating mise en scene (long sequence shots framing all the actors). The movie’s only negative point is its excessive duration (almost 2:10), which ultimately acts against the interest of the plot and prevents it from being deeply moving and completely convincing.