31/05/2013 - Romania's biggest film event, with almost 200 films, 700 guests and ten days of screenings

The biggest film festival in Romania and one of the most important in Eastern Europe, Transylvania International Film Festival (May 31 - June 9) kicks off today with the national premiere of I’m So Excited [+see also:
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trailer
film profile], Pedro Almodóvar's most recent feature scheduled for domestic release on June 7. Almost 200 films from more than 50 countries (70% of them European productions or co-productions) will be screened in ten venues, some of the most popular being the outdoor screen in Cluj’s Unirii Square.

Directors Stephen Frears and Jiri Menzel and Romania’s prodigious film music composer Adrian Enescu will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards at the closing gala, while Romanian actress Luminita Gheorghiu, famous for films such as Child’s Pose [+see also:
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interview: Calin Peter Netzer
film profile] (Golden Bear winner at this year’s Berlinale) and The Death of Mr. Lazarescu [+see also:
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film profile], will receive an Excellence Award.

Among the festival’s guest there are Nik Powell, director of UK National Film and Television School, Pablo Berger, director of Spanish silent film Snow White [+see also:
film review
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interview: Pablo Berger
film profile], DoP Ed Lachman (Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise trilogy, presented in a marathon-screening at TIFF), UK producer Lynda Myles, Marie-Pierre Vallé, acquisitions manager for Wild Bunch, Grainne Humphreys, director of Dublin International Film Festival, Mirsad Purivatra, director of Sarajevo Film Festival, and Romanian director Cristi Puiu, also responsible for the festival’s visual campaign, are among this edition’s hundreds of special guests.

12 first or second features from four continents vie for the Transylvania Trophy. TIFF also gives an Audience Award: the award consists in local distribution from the festival’s distribution partner, Transilvania Film.

The festival organizes the second edition of Transylvania Talent Lab, a program meant to teach 20 young professionals the secrets of the film industry. Among this year’s teachers there are Nik Powell, Ed Lachman and Sebastian Lelio, whose Gloria [+see also:
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TIFF 2013 will end on Sunday, June 9, with a screening of Academy Awards-nominated Kon-Tiki [+see also:
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film profile]. The Cluj edition will be followed by a shorter event in the city of Sibiu.

Stefan Dobroiu