Christian Mungiu's Bacalaureat (Graduation) is a movie wise about both human nature and the corrupt world of bribes and favors. When a respected Romanian Doctor's (Adrian Titieni) daughter Eliza (Maria-Victoria Dragus) is assaulted by a rapist the day before her final examination, which is ultimately her entry to a college in England, her dreams of escaping the mundane world her parents were subjected to growing up in begins to crumble. The father now must visit various members of Romanian bureaucracy and ask for unusual favors, actions that aren't necessarily legal and fair, but hey, neither was the assault on his daughter the day before the most important moment of her life (the man also got his living room window and his car window broken by an unknown assailant). Director Mungiu continues making some of the most important movies about the state of Romanian life (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), and in Graduation he presents us with a good, hard working honest everyman whose values are shaken to the core due to an already unfair system where honesty isn't necessarily rewarded. The craftsmanship of the camerawork is at best minimal: every set-up is executed with one camera angle, and editing is only used to take us from scene to scene, but never within the same scene, a style that the director has been known for. With Graduation, Mungiu has officially arrived on the international scene as one of the world's best filmmakers.
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