The Romanian filmmaker’s You Don’t Belong Here examines how xenophobia, adolescent violence and family denial intersect beneath the surface of contemporary European society.
LOCARNO, SWITZERLAND | CINEMA & SOCIETY | AUGUST 2026
Romanian director Florin Șerban won the Golden Leopard, the highest award at the Locarno Film Festival, for You Don’t Belong Here, a social drama exploring racism and the radicalization of young people in present-day Romania.
The film, whose original Romanian title is Nu e locul tău aici, follows a single father working as a physician whose life is destabilized when police identify his teenage son as a suspect in the killing of an elderly Roma man.
Initially unable to reconcile the accusation with the child he believes he knows, the father begins uncovering a hidden existence. At night, the teenager rides through the city with a masked vigilante group involved in intimidation, vandalism and xenophobic violence.
Șerban presents racism not as an isolated eruption but as a force cultivated through social resentment, group identity and the normalization of contempt. The family drama becomes an examination of how extremist behavior can develop in spaces where prejudice is minimized or ignored.
The film also confronts the father’s moral dilemma. His instinct to protect his son gradually collides with evidence that parental affection can become a form of denial when it refuses to acknowledge violence directed against vulnerable communities.
Teodor Butănescu, appearing in his first leading role, received a special mention for his portrayal of the violent and increasingly alienated teenager. His performance was recognized for avoiding a simplistic representation of hatred and revealing the insecurity, anger and desire for belonging beneath the character’s brutality.
The Golden Leopard consolidates Șerban’s position as one of the most internationally recognized directors in contemporary Romanian cinema. His debut feature, If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival.
His second film, Box, received the FIPRESCI critics’ award at Karlovy Vary in 2015, while his later productions continued exploring marginalization, emotional isolation and relationships shaped by unequal power.
At Locarno, You Don’t Belong Here prevailed in an international competition that brought together established filmmakers and emerging voices. The festival’s jury placed Șerban’s drama at the center of a program strongly marked by stories about intolerance, displacement and fractured communities.
The victory also directs international attention toward discrimination against Roma communities, a persistent issue across Europe. Rather than treating racism as a distant political abstraction, the film places it inside a household and asks what happens when ideological violence becomes part of a family’s private reality.
Through its portrait of a father discovering the stranger within his own son, Șerban’s film suggests that hatred does not emerge without warning. It grows through silences, tolerated prejudices and the refusal to recognize what is already visible.
Lo visible y lo oculto, en contexto. / The visible and the hidden, in context.