“The film was pre-sold based on its script and before shooting in more than 20 territories during Cannes Film Festival in 2015”, Mungiu told FNE. In France the film will be distributed by Le Pacte and in the UK by Artificial Eye. Voodoo Films will release it in Romania right after the world premiere in Cannes.

The film was produced by Cristian Mungiu through Mobra Films in coproduction with France’s Why Not Productions, Belgium’s Les Films du Fleuve and France 3 Cinema with the support of the Romanian National Film Centre and Eurimages.

Starring Adrian Titieni, Maria Dragus (a young Romanian-born German actress who made her debut in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon) and Lia Bugnar, Graduation is a contemporary story about parenting and education.

The story revolves around Romeo Aldea, a physician living in a small mountain town in Transylvania, who has raised his daughter Eliza with the idea that once she turns 18, she will leave to study abroad. His plan is close to succeeding. Eliza has got a scholarship to study psychology in the UK and she just has to pass her final exams, a formality for such a good student, but on the day prior to her first written exam, an incident jeopardizes Eliza’s departure.