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SEEfest Hosting 2 Films at AFI Fest 2016

Vera Mijojlic | November 3, 2016, 12:28 PM

 

This year, SEEfest will be hosting two South East European films at the 2016 AFI Fest, Graduation and Death in Sarajevo. Both are fantastic films by phenomenally prominent South East European directors, and the SEEfest family could not be more proud to be associated with them at AFI this year.

The AFI Festival 2016 will be held at the TCL Chinese Theatres in Hollywood from November 10th-17th, and tickets are free on a first come first served basis.

 

 

graduation

GRADUATION (BACALAUREAT)

Director: Cristian Mungiu
Screenwriter: Cristian Mungiu
Producer: Cristian Mungiu
Executive Producer: Tudor Reu
Director of Photography: Tudor Vladimir Panduru
Editor: Mircea Olteanu
Production Designer: Simona Pădurețu
Cast: Adrian Titieni, Maria Drăguș, Lia Bugnar, Mălina Manovici, Vlad Ivanov, Gelu Colceag, Rareș Andrici, Petre Ciubotaru

Romania, 2016
128 min.
Feature
World Cinema Section

When a doctor’s bright young daughter is assaulted the day before her final exams, he will do anything to make sure her scholarship to Cambridge isn’t jeopardized.

Romeo, a middle-aged doctor living in the Romanian city of Cluj, is faced with a brutal moral dilemma. His bright young daughter, Eliza, is on the cusp of receiving a scholarship to Cambridge — she just needs to ace her final exam to secure her placement at the prestigious British university. When Eliza is assaulted the day before her exam, suddenly the likelihood of her passing the test with flying colors grows dim. Desperate to see his daughter leave the corrupt and dysfunctional Cluj and start a life of opportunity in the UK, Romeo begins the precarious dance of pulling strings around town with various higher-ups to make sure Eliza receives the marks she needs. Romanian master and AFI FEST alum Cristian Mungiu again crafts a deft, slow-burn social thriller that exposes the diseased nature of the system and how it infects everyone operating within it. With Mungiu’s signature long takes, and a finely modulated performance by Adrien Titieni as Romeo, GRADUATION is a film not only about corruption but also the grey areas of parenting and family striving. — Beth Hanna

 

 

death-in-sarajevo

DEATH IN SARAJEVO (SMRT U SARAJEVU)

Director: Danis Tanović
Screenwriter: Danis Tanović
Producer: Francois Margolin, Amra Bakšić Čamo
Director of Photography: Erol Zubčević
Editor: Redžinald Šimek
Production Designer: Mirna Ler
Music: Mirza Tahirović
Cast: Jaques Weber, Snežana Vidović, Izudin Bajrovic, Vedrana Seksan, Muhamed Hadžović, Faketa Salihbegović-Avdagić, Edin Avdagić, Aleksandar Seksan

France l Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2016
85 min.
Feature
World Cinema Section

Director Danis Tanović turns the luxurious Hotel Europa in the heart of Sarajevo into an ideological battleground in this Silver Bear winner out of the Berlinale.

In 1914, a Serbian man named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, kicking off the chain of events that led to World War I. One hundred years later, during a centennial commemoration of those events, Academy Award®-winning director Danis Tanović turns the luxurious Hotel Europa in the heart of Sarajevo into an ideological battleground. As visiting luminaries arrive for the ceremony, a looming hotel-worker strike pits a furious staff against management’s underhanded cronies, while elsewhere, arguments about the region’s turbulent history of violent conflict — beginning with Princip’s fateful act — threaten to reach a dangerous boiling point. Tanović’s sublimely fluid camera glides through every corner of the expansive hotel, breathlessly capturing the escalating tensions with virtuosic panache. The film, a potent reminder that our unstable present has deep roots in the past, won the Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. — Mike Dougherty

 

 

 


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