07/05/2010

Romanian Days, the traditional domestic film showcase of the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Cluj-Napoca (May 28-June 6), will this year comprise as many as 18 features and 19 shorts, the biggest number in the festival's nine-year history.

Two of the titles are part of the 12-film competition line-up for the Transylvania Trophy – Calin Netzer's Medal of Honor [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Razvan Radulescu and Melissa de Raaf's First of All, Felicia [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Melissa de Raaf and Razvan …
film profile] – while another three will come directly from Cannes: Cristi Puiu's Aurora [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Clara Voda
film profile] and Radu Muntean's Tuesday, After Christmas [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Muntean
film profile] (both in Un Certain Regard), and Andrei Ujica's documentary The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, which will screen out of competition in the Official Selection.

Romanian Days will also screen Constantin Popescu's debut feature The Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man [+see also:
film review
film profile], which premièred in the Forum section of this year's Berlinale and won the Audience Award at the Bucharest Film Festival; and Titus Muntean's second film, Kino Caravan.

This year's newcomers include Alexandru Maftei, with his Romanian/Spanish/Italian co-production Hello! How Are You?, about an unhappy, 40-something husband and wife who re-fall in love with each other after long chats on the Internet, ignorant of the fact that they know each other and have been sharing a life for decades. Alongside Corneliu Gheorghita, whose Europolis is a fantastic dramedy about a Romanian mother and son going to France to collect the money left by a dead relative, and stars Luminita Gheorghiu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Andi Vasluianu ( The Other Irina).

Another première in the section's line-up is Radu Gabrea's The Red Gloves, about a young Saxon writer pressured to incriminate his literary colleagues during months of interrogation and torture by the Romanian Securitate. Dan Chisu’s The Bear will show the misadventures of a young manager of the Bucharest State Circus during the critical first years after the Romanian Revolution. Wanting to save the circus, the manager decides to sell its only bear to a German hunter.

Titles in Romanian Days’ documentary section include Alexandru Solomon's Kapitalism, Our Improved Formula, about some of Romania's most important moguls and their ways to get rich; The World According to Ion B by Alexandru Nanau; and Claudiu Mitcu’s The Merry Circus.