One Step Behind the Seraphim

An Orthodox seminary in Romania. Gabriel is fifteen and his father enrols him there. On the surface it is a religious education; the system that actually runs the place is something else. Informing, favours and debts have been organised among the pupils, and one of the teachers runs the whole arrangement by himself. Gabriel adapts first, and then finds himself in the middle of it. The question in front of him is how much of himself he will hand over to stay. The film follows five years and lets nobody off entirely. Daniel Sandu directs the Romanian film; two and a half hours, with Ştefan Iancu as Gabriel and Vlad Ivanov as the teacher. It is Sandu's first feature, written out of his own years at a seminary.