Respected surgeon Marius is the chief medical officer at a hospital in his small hometown, raising his 18-year-old son, Ioan, alone following the death of his wife. A confident professional, he has no idea what his reticent, introverted son gets up to at night, cycling through town with a gang of masked vigilantes and vandalising Romany cars. Marius’s world is shaken when he learns that the police suspect his son of murder. The actions of both father and son provide a lens through which to examine the society in which they live.
"The initial idea for You Don’t Belong Here came from a scene I wrote for an acting class some years ago. /.../ At the time, we were working on the theme of conflict between generations. In the scene, a father had to hide the overwhelming disdain he felt for his son. It felt deeply wrong at a visceral level, and it stayed with me over the years. At one point, I remembered a quote by Hannah Arendt: “The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution,” and then things kind of fell into place." (Florin Serban)
Florin Serban
Born in 1975 in Reșița, Romania, he studied philosophy and obtained an MA in Philosophy of Culture and Hermeneutics from Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. He studied film directing in Bucharest before moving to the US, where he graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in Film Directing. His debut feature film, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Berlinale, while You Don't Belong Here won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at Locarno.