09/06/2016 - 79,000 tickets were sold over ten days at the event’s 15th edition

It is without doubt the most popular film-related event in Romania: the 15^th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (27 May-5 June, Cluj-Napoca) closed with a 9% increase in attendance levels, with approximately 79,000 tickets sold over ten days. 25% of these tickets were bought online, following the festival’s stronger presence on this medium, boasting a friendlier website and new smartphone applications. 

However, the number of viewers at the 15^th edition was in fact higher, at approximately 120,000, as the festival organised an impressive array of free screenings, while the 1,100 guests were able to attend screenings without tickets in its approximately 20 locations.

Among the festival’s most popular events were the opening, when Nae Caranfil’s 6.9 on the Richter Scale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nae Caranfil
film profile] was screened in front of a record number of circa 3,000; the screening of the classic Marriage Italian Style, attended by star Sophia Loren, the winner of the edition’s Lifetime Achievement Award; two screenings of Bogdan Mirică’s Dogs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bogdan Mirica
film profile], following its winning the festival’s top award, the Transilvania Trophy; and a cine-concert screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc, hosted by a local church. The Romanian comedy Two Lottery Tickets [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paul Negoescu
film profile] benefited from a very popular open-air screening in the park of Vlaha, while the only screening of Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Cristi Puiu
film profile] saw one of the most densely packed cinemas in the gathering’s history.

TIFF 2016 screened 248 films from 64 countries, while 350 volunteers across 33 departments aided the organisers. The evolution of the festival and its ongoing investment in the city’s cultural life was the main focus of Corina Şuteu’s (Romania’s Minister of Culture) comment for the festival’s daily, AperiTIFF: “We should be aware that in culture, as in education or in the health system, the investment must be long term.”