Romanian director Christian Mongi won the Best Director Award at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival with his new "Graduation Exam", which is also his second honor after winning Best Director for "Three Weeks and Two Days in April" in 2007 work.
The story takes place in an ordinary middle-class family in Romania. Romeo, the attending doctor, intends to send his daughter Eliza to study in the UK after graduation. Eliza, who has always been excellent, can easily change her life as long as she passes the graduation exam with high scores as usual. , but she was attacked the day before the college entrance examination. Romeo worried that Eliza, who was frightened after the attack, would not be able to successfully complete the exam and miss this opportunity, so he began to seek ways to save his daughter's precious opportunities in human relationships, completely forgetting his own principles and the education he had given to his daughter.
This film looks at the reality and exposes a series of social problems in Romania: the pressure of further education, going through the back door, bribery, security problems, extramarital affairs. Interestingly, many viewers shouted that the plot can be seamlessly transplanted into China after watching the movie. The director also said in it that the content of the film is "about compromise and principles, about decisions and choices, about individualism and solidarity, and of course about education, family and years."
In the film, the father's meticulous love projected on his daughter reveals a hint of helplessness and bitterness. Forcibly instilling the family and country feelings of the previous generation into the next generation can only backfire in the end. In the face of sudden changes and challenges, as a principled and well-behaved father, he has also become a negative teaching material in his own mouth, which makes people sigh and sigh. In the interview, the director asked without hesitation: "How should we educate our children? Teach them to strive for their own comfort, or teach them to respect others and defend their values? Can the end measure the means? Do you have a completely different approach to education for the next generation?"
The plot of the film is compact, smooth and full, with one scene and one shot, with very few shots being scheduled. In just 100 minutes, the complex and multi-faceted relationship between characters of a middle-class family is vividly displayed, which is worth watching and savoring.
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