You Don't Belong Here (Nu e locul tau aici)

Marius is the chief medical officer at a hospital in his small hometown, raising a teenage son, Ioan, alone after the death of his wife. His world is shaken when he learns that the police have come to suspect his son of murder.

Marius has strong ideas about today’s youth. Their ignorance, and lack of agency. He does not believe in his son’s generation. Yet it is with an old friend of his own age that Marius has these long conversations on the issues that are on his mind, not with his own son. The shy Ioan struggles to open up and share thoughts and emotions with his imposing father. Ioan’s always-lit computer holds more of his secrets than his flesh and blood.

This incredibly compelling moral fable from Romania is the deserving winner of this year’s Golden Leopard, the Locarno Film Festival’s top award. The film’s themes, reminiscent of smash hit series Adolescence, are bleak, but the experience extremely rewarding. A hypothesis takes shape in our minds as we watch You Don’t Belong Here: before accusing screens of all the ills, have we look at ourselves, as a parent and simply a citizen playing a part in society’s puzzle: are we okay with what we are?