London Film Festival Day 4: Manchester By The Sea, Elle & Graduation

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Beyond The Hills) continues his penchant for crafting challenging films for patient audiences with this drama about a father, Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni), who goes to morally dubious lengths to ensure the academic success of his daughter, Eliza (Maria-Victoria Drăgus), who has been refused "special circumstances" for an arm injury that occurs shortly before her crucial exams.

Like Mungui's other movies, there's no hurry here to tell his tale, and to that end the 128-minute length does feel a little flabby at times, but on the whole the devastating social realism of the morally ambiguous focal scenario is accentuated by both Mungui's observational direction and two excellent lead performances.

Titieni is particularly brilliant as a well-meaning but undeniably shady father who attempts to right a wrong by supplanting it with another wrong, and of course, this has potentially disastrous consequences.

Rating: Winner of the Cannes Film Festival's coveted Best Director award and rightly so, Graduation may not be the most energetic or immediately rousing of films, but it bleeds out unexpected suspense and anxiety while painting a depressing picture of Romanian injustice. 7/10