Graduation

Watch Graduation (Bacalaureat, 2016) online on iFILM — a Romanian drama written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, who took the Best Director prize at Cannes that year. Adrian Titieni plays a provincial doctor who has spent his life setting his daughter up to leave Romania, and then watches the plan collapse in a single morning.

Eliza, played by Maria-Victoria Dragus, is attacked the day before her final exams. The injury is minor, but her writing hand is hurt enough to put her scholarship at risk. Her father Romeo starts making calls, pulling strings, calling in favors from people he used to despise. Each small compromise makes the next one easier.

Mungiu does not dramatize the corruption — he films it at eye level, quietly, the way it actually works. What makes Graduation uncomfortable is how reasonable every bad decision looks in the moment. Stream Graduation (2016) online on iFILM.