Film: Graduation – Thame Cinema – Friday

THIS week’s film to be shown by Thame Cinema 4 All, on Friday, June 9, is GRADUATION, a Romanian film, made in 2016. It’s a 15 certificate is is 125 minutes long. Graduation is directed by Cristian Mungiu and stars Adrian Titieni, Maria-Victoria Dragus, Rares Andrici, Lia Bugnar, Malina Manovici and Vlad Ivanov.

Synopsis – Romeo Aldea is a middle aged doctor with a complicated life: an ageing mother, a demanding mistress, a disinterested wife, and a daughter, Eliza, who is about to leave high school. On the eve of an important final exam – one that will decide whether or not she gets a scholarship at a British university – Eliza is assaulted by a stranger near her school.

Badly shaken and injured, her participation in the examination is under threat. Romeo is far more threatened by this than his daughter. Having left for the west and returned some years earlier, he has regrets about what might have been, and his daughter’s possible future will be his redemption as much as it is her opportunity. He has a choice to make. A man who considers himself far more principled than the society he is part of, Romeo has to decide whether to compromise those principles and engage in the kind of corruption that he normally holds in contempt. He knows people in the right places, games that can be played and strings that can be pulled to help Eliza.

Mungiu’s film, like many contemporary masterpieces of post Soviet European cinema, examines the legacies of the past: the ghosts of the old regime haunt the present such that the wide-scale corruption of the old society has translated into individual moral and spiritual corruption that people struggle to resist.

You can view trailer HERE – Tickets £5 each, are available on the door or online- Click HERE

Doors open 7.30pm for an 8pm start. Licensed bar.