TIFF at the 18th edition
Hundreds of film screenings, absolute firsts, spectacular concerts and exhibitions will be held to mark the 18th edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival.
Leyla Cheamil, 31.05.2019, 13:50
The first international feature film festival in Romania – TIFF, which is hosted in Transylvania’s biggest city, Cluj-Napoca, started on Friday. The 18th edition of TIFF will last until June 8 and will include screenings of more than 200 films, exhibitions and concerts. This year’s edition celebrates the filmmakers of France, China and Albania. Destined for directors who have already produced their first or second fiction film, the festival’s official competition is going to be very exciting this year as well. It includes 12 singular, strong and challenging works, to put it in the words of the organizers, therefore the mission of the jury is not going to be easy, given that they will have to choose only one winner of the Transylvania Trophy.
Mihai Chirilov, the TIFF’s artistic director says that this year he has been ‘interested mainly in those films that do not focus on the current social and political context, the directors choosing either to avoid it completely or to subtly insert it in intimist stories, boldly explored beyond any consequences’. The only Romanian film registered in the competition is ‘Monsters’ which is the debut film of director Marius Oltean. It is a love story about compromise, social pressure and painful revelations in the life of a couple. The film is first presented in the Forum section of the 2019 Berlinale and received the Grand Prize in Sofia.
Iceland brings the film A White, White Day, the second feature film of director Hlynur Palmason, who won the Prize for best director at the 2018 edition of TIFF with the film Winter Brothers. The film features a taciturn policeman who is obsessed with the idea that his wife was cheating on him even two years after her death. Other feature films running in the official competition are System Crasher by Nora Fingscheidt, presented at this year’s Berlinale, and Un homme fidele which received the best screenplay award in 2018 in San Sebastián, being the second feature film in the French artist Louis Garrel’s career as a director. He is playing in the film alongside his wife Laetitia Casta.
As many as 40 Romanian films will be screened at the festival. One of the films is Emigrant Blues directed by Claudiu Mitcu together with Mihai Mincan, and it included in the Days of Romanian Film section. It is an original documentary film inspired by the story of the Romanians who leave the country to work in Spain. A special guest at this edition of the TIFF is actor Nicolas Cage who will receive the Transylvania Trophy for Special Contribution to World Cinema. (translation by L. Simion)
