NU E LOCUL TĂU AICI
Romania
2026 | 154 min. | Fiction

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. He is a confident
professional, who has no idea what his son gets up to at night, cycling through town vandalizing cars with a gang of masked vigilantes. Marius’s world is shaken when he learns that the police have come to suspect his son of murder.

Directed by: Florin Şerban
Written by: Florin Şerban
Produced by: Florin Şerban, Ruxandra Flonta, Marius Leftărache, Sebastian Plamadeala, Vlad Radulescu, Carmen Rizac, Adrian Vancica
Cinematography: Liviu Mãrghidan
Editing: Florin Şerban
Production Design: Bogdan Ionescu
Costume Design: Cosmina Croitoru
Make-Up & Hair: Bianca Boeroiu, Margo Stefan
Original Score: Marius Leftărache, Nikita Dembinski
Sound: Mirel Cristea
Casting: Catalin Dordea
Cast: Adrian Văncică (Marius), Teodor Butănescu (Ioan), Cristina Richter (Dana), Alex Conovaru (Chief of Police), Izdrailă Janir (Giani)

Statement of the director:
The initial idea for YOU DON'T BELONG HERE came from a scene I wrote for an acting class some years ago. I teach at Școala de Film (The Film School) in Bucharest, a film school I founded with a few other filmmakers. 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. The disdain does not need to be visceral; it is the contempt of an old revolutionary towards a new one. It felt good as a
narrative spine, and it stayed that way until I started casting.

My casting sessions usually take up to two years. This was the case for my debut feature, IF I WANT TO WHISTLE, I WHISTLE, and my second feature BOX. I see casting as not only the process of finding the right actors but more about rethinking the story, finding its pulse and its breath, along the way. During the casting process, I realised I should reframe the father-son dynamic. The father, bound by his duty towards the son, fights to disguise his contempt. The father had always done the right thing, studied and worked hard; and was proud of his achievements. The son, after realising that he had been disappointing his father day after day, tries to make his own mark on the world by joining a group of far-right vigilantes. The son feels he is no longer wanted, that he does not belong. Quite like we all did at one point in our lives.
The far-right movement in the film was inspired by the Russian StopXam group, also known on YouTube as Stop a Douchebag. The organisation was founded by NASHI, a Russian youth group widely characterised as Putin’s Private Army. It is now defunct but gained its reputation fighting traffic violations in Moscow by putting stickers on the windshields of cars illegally parked on sidewalks.

The movement echoed through Eastern European countries but never had staying power in Romania, where cars parked on the sidewalk remain a true
calamity. It was easy for me to see how a teenager seduced by the lure of fighting for civic order can get caught up in violent and anti-social behaviours,
like antisemitism, racism or homophobia, that he may have once despised. A broken father-son relationship; a father seen as a tragic figure, someone who once dreamed of leaving a mark on the world but ended up becoming a pillar of the community; a son who feels belittled by his father and tries to redeem himself by fighting civic battles; a certain degree of institutional racism—subtle, something no one admits to, yet very real; dreams, illusions, and a small town. These became the foundation of the story.

We undertook a great deal of preparation and rehearsal before we went to the set. It was planned that way not only for budgetary and practical reasons, but mainly to give ourselves the freedom to focus entirely on getting strong, edgy, authentic performances from the actors. I shot mainly long takes, which require the camera and all the actors to be precise throughout entire scenes in every single take. Getting there was often difficult. We needed many takes, sometimes more than thirty.

I chose this shooting style because I wanted the viewer to enter the characters’ lives and witness the drama from within, without relying on rapid
editing to create tension.

We shot in Reșița, a small town in western Romania where I grew up. It was important for me to set the story in a place that mirrors the main character:
struggling, proud, once one of Romania’s most important industrial hubs, now marked by nostalgia and regret, though the town, like the father, would never admit it.

As it stands, YOU DON'T BELONG HERE is, above all, a portrait of a way of seeing the world that may be disappearing. Or perhaps should disappear.

Production:
Fantascope Films
https://fantascopefilms.ro/

World Sales:
REASON8
https://reason8films.com