{"id":599077,"date":"2026-08-20T10:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599077\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T10:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T10:42:09","slug":"you-dont-belong-here-director-preps-follow-up-to-locarno-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/599077\/","title":{"rendered":"‘You Don’t Belong Here’ Director Preps Follow-Up to Locarno Winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRomanian filmmaker Florin \u015eerban, whose bleak study of systemic racism and toxic masculinity \u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d won the Golden Leopard<\/a> at the recently wrapped Locarno Film Festival<\/a>, is prepping his next feature film.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to\u00a0Variety\u00a0at the Sarajevo Film Festival<\/a>, where \u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d is playing in the main competition, the director shared details about his next project, \u201cEla, or the Diary of a Dutiful Daughter From Romania,\u201d for which casting is already underway.<\/p>\n

\n\tWritten by Adriana Neagoe, \u201cEla\u201d is \u201ca story about a girl who needs to go away from a family that is very troubled, bounded by alcoholism and violence. She needs to leave before she repeats the story herself, because her life is going in that direction,\u201d said \u015eerban.<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by the book \u201cMemoirs of a Dutiful Daughter,\u201d by French existentialist philosopher and writer Simone de Beauvoir, the film follows a young Romanian woman who keeps a TikTok diary \u201cwhere she documents the way she wants her life to be,\u201d said \u015eerban, \u201cnot the way her life actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, which has received support from Romania\u2019s CNC, will be produced by \u015eerban\u2019s Bucharest-based label Fantascope Films, Scharf Film and Avanpost. \u015eerban is currently searching for international co-producers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director arrived in Sarajevo fresh off his Locarno triumph, where alongside the top prize, \u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d scooped\u00a0the festival\u2019s Junior Jury and Europa Cinemas Label awards, as well as a special mention for its young star Teodor But\u0103nescu.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe hardest part is the premiere,\u201d the director said, over coffee at Sarajevo\u2019s historic Hotel Europe. \u201cEvery single moment watching the film on the huge screen for the first time, literally, it\u2019s like you\u2019ve aged two years. I got out of the cinema drained. I was on the verge of tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d tells the story of a respected doctor (Adrian V\u0103ncic\u0103) at a smalltown hospital who\u2019s raising his teenage son, Ioan (Teodor But\u0103nescu), alone after the death of his wife. Unaware that his son is vandalizing cars by night with a gang of masked vigilantes, his world is shaken when he learns that Ioan is a suspect in the murder of a Roma man.<\/p>\n

\n\tNearly a decade in the making, the film is a somber exploration of masculinity in Southeast Europe, a study of generational divides and a damning portrait of institutionalized racism against Romania\u2019s Roma community.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor \u015eerban, it\u2019s also a personal story inspired by his own experience as a father, and a dawning recognition that fatherhood \u2014 and the role of men in society \u2014 is rapidly changing in contemporary Europe.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow do we relate to the reality of the world as men in our forties, in our fifties?\u201d the 51-year-old director asked. \u201cThere were several changes in the paradigm of how, in this day and age, men should relate to the ones around them. Because this patriarchal model that still exists in the Balkans, that still exists in Europe, little by little, it\u2019s dying. What do we replace it with?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Marius, there are no easy answers. Middle-aged, hounded by disappointment, he struggles to understand both his son and the generation he represents, never quite finding a way to articulate his love while holding onto \u201ca reality that is vanishing,\u201d according to the director.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor this character, living in this place, there\u2019s no space for love. There\u2019s no time for love,\u201d said \u015eerban. \u201cYou always had this idea that the man had to prove himself. The man had to be a magnet for success, money, fame. He can fail, but he has to get right back up. He cannot shed a tear. He has to be strong. A hero.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d marks a return to international festival prominence for the Romanian New Wave veteran, whose debut feature \u201cIf I Want to Whistle, I Whistle\u201d premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival in 2010, where it won the Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u015eerban\u00a0took a break from the director\u2019s chair following the 2018 release of the romantic drama \u201cLove 2. America,\u201d\u00a0focusing instead on \u0218coala de Film, a Bucharest-based film school he founded in 2010 and later expanded with the help of Romanian actress Cosmina Stratan (\u201cBeyond the Hills\u201d) and the U.S.-based Spanish filmmaker\u00a0Antonio M\u00e9ndez Esparza\u00a0(\u201cLife and Nothing More\u201d).<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was among the school\u2019s ranks that the director discovered But\u0103nescu and more than a dozen other actors in \u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here.\u201d With the school running smoothly in Bucharest, \u015eerban said he was finally able to return to directing \u2014 not least because he also had a story that needed to be told.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a story that\u2019s very close to me. It\u2019s a story that I feel deeply,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I think about a lot. I think it\u2019s the time to raise these questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 14 \u2013 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romanian filmmaker Florin \u015eerban, whose bleak study of systemic racism and toxic masculinity \u201cYou Don\u2019t Belong Here\u201d won…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,253933,61,60,3428,270,250717],"class_list":["post-599077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-florin-serban","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-locarno-film-festival","tag-movies","tag-sarajevo-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}