A powerful drama crowned with the Queer Palm
About the Event
We are thrilled to invite you to a special preview of Three Kilometers to the End of the World, the powerful drama directed by Emanuel Pârvu, our submission to the 2025 Academy Award for Best International Feature competition. The screening will take place at IFC Center on December 4 at 7:00 PM and will be followed by a Q&A with director Emanuel Pârvu and producer Miruna Berescu. Don’t miss the opportunity to see this thought-provoking film and to engage with the creative minds behind it. The event is part of the film’s official campaign for the Oscars, financed by the Ministry of Culture of Romania.
The film, which premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival where it won the Queer Palm, tells the gripping story of 17-year-old Adi, who is violently attacked in his quiet village in the Danube Delta. As Adi's world is turned upside down, he must navigate the painful realization that his family can no longer offer him the love and support he desperately needs. The film explores themes of identity, acceptance, and unconditional love in the face of tragedy, with a raw emotional depth that has resonated with audiences and critics alike.
THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD / TREI KILOMETRI PÂNĂ LA CAPĂTUL LUMII: DIR Emanuel Pârvu
2024, 105’, subtitles
Followed by a Q&A with director Emanuel Parvu, producer Miruna Berescu, moderated by Dorian Branea, director of RCI New York
17-year-old Adi is spending the summer in his home village in the Danube Delta. One night he is brutally attacked on the street and his world is turned upside-down. When the family is violently confronted with a truth, they can neither understand nor accept, the unconditional love Adi should receive from his parents suddenly disappears, and Adi is left with only one solution. The film premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Queer Palm. The competes as the Romanian entry for the 2025 Oscar for Best International Feature.
Born in 1979, Emanuel Pârvu is a film and theatre actor, director, writer and academic at the Faculty of Arts of the Ovidius University in Constanța. He graduated from the National University of Theatre and Cinema in Bucharest in 2006. As an actor, he performed in GRADUATION (d. Cristian Mungiu), MIRACLE (d. Bogdan George Apetri), TALES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE (d. C. Mungiu), PORTRAIT OF THE FIGHTER AS A YOUNG MAN (d. Constantin Popescu). He directed two feature films: MEDA OR THE NOT SO BRIGHT SIDE OF THINGS (2017) and MAROCCO/MIKADO (2021).
AWARDS: Winner of Queer Palm and nominee at Palme d'Or at 2024 Cannes Film Festival, winner of Heart of Sarajevo Best Film at 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival, and winner of Best Director Award for International Cinema. It was nominated at The Nechama Rivilin Award for Best International Film at 2024 Jerusalem Film Festival; for Best Film at 2024 Valladolid International Film Festival; for Best Feature Film at Romanian Days Award section of 2024 Transilvania International Film Festival; and for Gold Q-Hugo at 2024 Chicago International Film Festival.
"Still, actor-turned-director Emanuel Parvu (Meda or The Not So Bright Side of Things) has fashioned the kind of competent if predictable drama that will tick the right boxes for festival regulars hungry for work that affirms their prejudices against bigoted hicks in all the fly-over countries of the world. A drama about a vicious beating that ends up turning over rocks that hide corruption and cruelty, Three Kilometers at least wrings maximum benefit from its beautiful Danube Delta location, a sun-dappled marshland full of whispering reeds fringed by unspoiled beaches. If it weren’t for the grimness of what happens in the story, this would do wonders for local tourism.
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Parvu and his co-screenwriter Miruna Berescu, also the film’s producer, build up a fairly interesting ensemble of supporting characters, including a local B&B landlady (Crina Semciuc) who never takes visitor details because she doesn’t want to pay tax, and Adi’s best friend on the island (Ingrid Micu-Berescu), who may be a little in love with him in a teenage-crush way. But having gotten all these chess pieces on the board, the strategy doesn’t deploy them in any fancy gambits. It’s a quick checkmate and stop the clock. (‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’ Review: An Overly Tidy Romanian Drama About a Homophobic Hate Crime by Leslie Felperin)
