TIFF International Film Festival
Young film makers are vying for the trophies of the international competitions of the 24th edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival hosted by Cluj Napoca between the 13th and the 22nd of June
Corina Sabău, 21.06.2025, 14:49
12 productions from around the world are in competition for the Transylvania Trophy and the other prizes of the official competition, while 10 productions will be vying for the prize of the What’s Up Doc? sidebar.
Documentary film maker Andrei Ujică will receive the excellence prize for his remarkable contribution to cinema. Before emigrating to Germany in the early 1980s, Andrei Ujică published poetry, essays and prose. Alongside the poet Șerban Foarță, he also penned some of the lyrics of the iconic Romanian folk-rock band Phoenix. His latest film TWST – Things We Said Today, is shown in Cluj, with the director also giving a masterclass and meeting his public. Mihai Chirilov, TIFF’s artistic director, tells us more:
Mihai Chirilov: “The film was launched last year at the Venice Festival. It’s project Andrei Ujică is very close to and on which he worked a lot. He hasn’t made many films, he is a perfectionist, and he often works with archive material, which takes a long time to process. All his films involve a lot of editing and use archival footage, and they are very personal projects. He has made 6 films to date, including what is perhaps the best and most important film about the Romanian Revolution, The video-grams of a Revolution, his first film, dating from the early 1990s. Forty years later, he made this documentary, on which he has worked for more than 10 years, Things We Said Today. It’s a film about America in the 1960s, about the Beatles, a film about a different world, but which is facing many of the problems we are still facing today. The problems of a world Andrei Ujica interprets through his own personal filter, bringing his own perspective on the archive material he used.”
The Estonian cinematography is at the forefront of the 24th edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival through a programme entitled Focus Estonia. This is a selection presenting both recent films and rediscovered classical masterpieces screened in their restored versions.
Here is artistic director Mihai Chirilov with more on the issue.
Mihai Chirilov: “This section includes over 10 productions. Of course the Estonian cinematography may not say a lot to the public or even to film-goers at that but at TIFF we are trying to promote well-known titles but also less known productions. We cooperated very well with the Estonian Film Institute, which sent us not only new productions, but also older films that they keep in their archives. TIFF is actually doing this thing, you know, building such bridges between the present-day cinema and its classical counterpart. This is how we discovered two extraordinary productions, which we are screening at TIFF now. One of them is among my favourites this edition. It’s called ‘Smile at last’ and tells the story of a girl from an orphanage. It’s a very tough story mainly enacted by unprofessional actors 40 years ago. At this edition we have the pleasure of welcoming the protagonist of the aforementioned production, who was a teenager at that time. The film was restored last year and screened at the Berlinale and I am glad we can present it here at TIFF too. This section includes very diverse films, from parodies to Sci-Fi. There is even a series entitled “Alien”. Alien (Alien or Valdis’ Escape in 11 Chapters and Alien 2 or The Return of Valdis in 17 Chapters) are two cult films from the recent history of the Estonian cinematography. Another production in this selection is “Aurora”, the story of a girl attracted into a religious cult, a theme that is very popular nowadays.”
Inside the Romanian Film Days section, we are finding the most important productions in the local cinematography. There are 8 feature films, including 6 documentaries, and 20 short reels vying for the three awards up for grabs at TIFF: Best Feature Film, Best Debut and Best Short Reel. The schedule is completed by Romanian productions that have been awarded various prizes in the past year, and also by movies that will be having their world premiere outside the competition in Cluj-Napoca.
Two leading figures of the Romanian cinematography will be awarded prizes for their entire career at the 24th edition of TIFF: actress Emilia Dobrin and film critic, Valerian Sava.
(CM, bill)
