Graduation(2017)

Storyline

• Romeo Aldea (49), a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, has raised his daughter Eliza 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. — 69th Cannes International Film Festival 2016 Left only with a dented idealism, his weathered self-esteem and a dead-end relationship with his melancholic wife, Dr Romeo Aldea is a caring father of good intentions who is determined to see his only daughter succeed and leave once and for all from their bleak town. Hard-working and focused, Eliza has been offered a scholarship in Psychology to study in England, the only thing she needs to do is to pass her finals and secure her place at the esteemed university of Cambridge. Unfortunately, when Eliza narrowly escapes an assault on her way to school, traumatised and with her writing hand broken, she will begin to lose faith in her, threatening to compromise not only her well-planned future but also shatter her father's ambitions for his biggest investment: his only child. As the application date approaches, the desperate father will try anything in his power to bend the rules regardless of his conflicting ethical values, ignoring the fact that by doing so, he too greases the cogs of the very same system he struggled to escape. After all, in life, it is the result that counts. — Nick Riganas