How Long Is “Exam”?

A roomful of strangers discovers their dreams of a new career may be more difficult and dangerous than they imagined in this psychological thriller. Eight bright and ambitious people are in the running for a position as a top executive with a major bio-engineering firm, and they've been invited to corporate headquarters to take a test that will determine who gets the job. The assembled applicants are met by a man calling himself the Invigilator (Colin Salmon) who explains the testing process -- they'll each be given a sheet of paper with a single question, and they have eighty minutes to answer it. If they leave the room, attempt to ask him questions, talk to the security guards or mark the question sheet, they will be immediately disqualified. The eight applicants learn this isn't an ordinary test when they discover their question sheets are all blank, and the applicants are forced to turn to one to unravel the puzzle behind the cryptic question. Rather than identify themselves by name, the eight strangers assign themselves nicknames that point to their backgrounds or features: Black (Chuk Iwuji), Blonde (Nathalie Cox), Brown (Jimi Mistry), Brunette (Pollyanna McIntosh), Dark (Adar Beck), Deaf (John Lloyd Fillingham), Chinese (Gemma Chan) and White (Luke Mably). Over the course of eighty minutes, the applicants unwittingly reveal their backgrounds, the qualifications that earned them their place in the competition, and their notions about the real nature of the test. Exam received its United States premiere at the 2010 Santa Barbara Film Festival.