06/04/2011

NexT, Romania's leading short and medium-length film festival, kicks off today in Bucharest, with a competition of 26 international titles and several interesting sidebars.

The event features some of the best shorts of 2010, most of them European productions, including Bernardo Nascimento's North Atlantic (Portugal/UK), Yannick Muller's Elena (France), Nicolas Provost's Stardust (Belgium) and Victor Carrey's The Runaway (Spain).

Romania competes for the NexT Trophy with four shorts: Anca Miruna Lazarescu's Silent River (official competition, 2011 Berlinale), Victor Dragomir's period comedy Strung Love, Peter Kerek's Adultery and Olivia Caciuleanu's Heavyweight.

The Focus sidebars offer shorts from Clermont-Ferrand and Cannes’ International Critics Week, while Short Matters presents European Film Academy nominees from the last five years. The “They also were Next Generation” sidebar will screen three features by former festival winners Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls), Marian Crisan (Morgen [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Rosario Garcia-Montero (The Bad Intentions).

April also brings the capital’s foremost film festival, the Bucharest International Film Festival (BIFF), formerly known as B-EST IFF, which kicks off on April 11. Seven films will vie for top prize, with Pernilla August's directorial debut Beyond [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Chris Morris' Four Lions [+see also:
trailer
film profile] representing Europe. The winners will be announced on April 17.

BIFF sidebars will also screen some of the most awarded recent films, including Asghar Farhadi's Nader and Simin: A Separation (2011 Golden Bear winner) and Alex de la Iglesia's A Sad Trumpet Ballad [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Álex de la Iglesia
film profile] (Best Director and Best Screenplay at Venice 2010).