TIFF your way to Cluj-Napoca for its 22 edition of the film festival

The 22nd edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival will take place in Cluj-Napoca from June 9-18. BR asked the TIFF management team about the special things they have in store for this edition.

The highlights of this year’s festival will be a new film from Lars Von Trier—Riget Exodus/The Kingdom Exodus (Denmark, 2022), the third part of the cult horror trilogy—and Fatih Akin’s Rheingold (Germany, 2022), inspired by the life of rapper Xatar. Both films were winners at the Venice and Locarno festivals. There’s also the long-awaited Tár, with Cate Blanchett in the leading role, as well as La syndicaliste (dir. Jean-Paul Salomé, France, 2022), the new film starring Isabelle Huppert.

TIFF has also announced Nordic Focus, the most complex programme of its kind in the festival’s history, dedicated to a rich, diverse, and innovative European cinematography coming from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland. The programme is the result of a collaboration with the Göteborg Film Festival and film institutes in all five countries.

What’s not to be missed: Tudor Giurgiu, president of TIFF

“We’ll open TIFF.22 with an excellent comedy about the fear of flying—Northern Comfort. It is the first English-language film by Icelandic director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, a regular at our festival, who thus also inaugurates Nordic Focus, a large section of this edition that will bring to Cluj over 40 films, concerts, and dinner-concerts from the Nordic countries.

From this year’s programme, I would also recommend the dinner-concert A bomb was stolen, an event that marks 100 years since the birth of our great Ion Popescu-Gopo. The production is Gopo’s feature film debut and was presented in competition at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. At TIFF, it will be screened both in its original form and with a new soundtrack that was specially created for this event by composer Alexei Turcan and performed live by artists from Cluj-Napoca, members of the Romanian Cinema Orchestra, under the baton of conductor Tiberiu Soare.”

What’s not to be missed: Oana Bujgoi Giurgiu, executive director of TIFF

“On June 10, the first Saturday of the festival, Icelandic-British artist Jay Jay Johanson will perform at the Banffy Castle in Bontida. I think it’s the perfect setting for the music and lyrics of this melancholic charm. His concert will be followed by the screening of a documentary that serves as a history lesson: And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine (d. Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck, Sweden, 2023). An impressive and terrifyingly inventive collage, the film brings two centuries of imagery to the screen, from the first photograph in history to the advent of cinema and the lightning-fast evolution of television, to today’s technology, when everyone is a potential content creator. For me, this combination—music and film about film—is irresistible.

And we should definitely meet again at The Phantom Carriage dinner-concert. It is an original production of the festival, which invited Icelandic artist Barði Jóhannsson to compose and perform together with female post-punk trio Kælan Mikla, a new score for this classic of world cinema, voted the best Swedish film of all time by FLM (Sweden’s leading cinema magazine). The Phantom Carriage is particularly important in film history due to its artistic innovations and major influence on directors such as Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick. It’s a unique chance to enjoy Nordic creativity at its highest level.”

What’s not to be missed: Mihai Chirilov, TIFF artistic director

“If you’re going to watch just one title from the Sidney Lumet retrospective, go for his terrific masterpiece from the 70s, Network, and check out its prophetic and satirical power that’s still intact 50 years later, especially in these convoluted times driven by crass media manipulation. But really, all six films in the programme—including Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, both featuring a magnetic Al Pacino—deserve to be discovered or revisited in splendid restored versions.

TV series fans should definitely give five hours of their lives for a binging immersion in the last instalment of Lars von Trier’s trilogy The Kingdom, called Exodus, and its Twin Peaks-like creepy mood. It doesn’t matter if you’re not familiar with the first two seasons of this unique supernatural black comedy set in a hospital possessed by spooky demons and bureaucratic minds. Von Trier perfectly knows how to grab his audience by the throat and mess with everyone’s idea about good and evil coexisting, this time blending in the surreal mix of characters played by the likes of Alexander Skarsgard and Willem Dafoe.”

Retrospectives

Founder of the French New Wave and radical film critic and intellectual, director Jean-Luc Godard (1930 – 2022) will be celebrated at the 22nd edition of Transilvania International Film Festival. Eight of his highly acclaimed films will be screened as part of a special retrospective, Close-up Jean-Luc Godard, organised with the support of the French Institute of Romania.

The festival will also take us on a journey into the cinematic universe of one of the most prolific American directors of the modern period, Sidney Lumet (1924 – 2011), with six restored works. The programme is inspired by the retrospective dedicated to the same director by the Lumière Film Festival (Lyon, France) in 2022, a cinephile event par excellence that celebrates classic cinema by presenting restored versions of masterpieces and tributes to legendary directors.

Music

Courtesy of TIFF, electronic music band Tangerine Dream will hold its first concert in Romania. Over the past 50 years, the band has released over 100 studio albums and is a seven-time nominee of the Grammy Awards. Tangerine Dream has created over 60 film soundtracks, including Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985), William Friedkin’s thriller Sorcerer (1977), and Michael Mann’s neo-noir Thief (1981).

This year’s TIFF concerts will also include a special show by Swedish-British artist Jay-Jay Johanson, who will perform at Bontida during an event dedicated to Swedish music and film. Known for his melancholic voice and hits such as On the Radio, She Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone, Johanson is considered to be one of the most influential electro artists of his generation.

Special screenings

Liviu Ciulei Centenary

To celebrate the 100^th anniversary of director Liviu Ciulei’s birthday, Transilvania IFF.22 invites everyone to a special screening of Pădurea Spânzuraților / Forest of the Hanged. Released in 1964, the film received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director. Adapted from Liviu Rebreanu’s novel about the drama of Lieutenant Apostol Bologa in the First World War, the film remains an important milestone in the evolution of Romanian cinema and a defining moment in Victor Rebengiuc’s career. Pădurea spânzuraților / The Forest of the Hanged screening will take place on Saturday, June 10^th, at 19:15 at Cinema ARTA. Tickets are available online.

An evening of dancing

On Tuesday, June 13^th, at the Casa de Cultură a Studenților, the public is invited to the JTI Romania evenin featuring stories about dance, art and choreography. The programme opens with O întâmplare cu jazz (d. Mircea Albuțiu, 2023, Romania), a ciné-vérité essay about an artist who fundamentally redefined the vocabulary of Romanian dance: Miriam Răducanu. Filmed in the Răducanu family home, the short film shows the unclassifiable artist as she creates a new choreography guided by the jazz and trumpet of Miles Davis.

The second film of the evening, Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas (r. Chelsea McMullan, Canda, 2022), documents the rebirth of the Canadian National Ballet after the pandemic, the moments of uncertainty, the incredible joy of reuniting artists, the intense rehearsals, and the complex personality and fearless style of choreographer Crystal Pite. All preparations cathartically culminate in a full-length performance captured for cinema. Tickets are available online.

Masterclasses

Actors Timothy Spall, Geoffrey Rush and Darko Perić, directors Oliver Stone and Michel Franco and producer Čedomir Kolar are part of the masterclasses program at Transilvania IFF.22. The events are open to the public subject to availability and accredited guests and press will have priority access. The meetings take place at the Radisson Blu Hotel. Details here.

9 feature films and 16 short films enter the Romanian Days competition at Transilvania IFF.22. The selection includes some of last year’s best Romanian films, as well as productions that will have their world premiere in June 2023 in Cluj-Napoca. The Romanian Days awards three prizes: for best feature film, best debut, and best short film.

The selected feature films include the black comedy Men of Deeds (d. Paul Negoescu), the big winner at this year’s Gopo Awards, and To the North, Mihai Mincan’s fiction debut, which had its world premiere in Venice. The list continues with Boss, a film noir by director Bogdan Mirică, winner of the Transilvania Trophy at Transilvania IFF.15 (for Dogs), and the national premiere of Day of the Tiger, Andrei Tănase’s debut film selected this year in Rotterdam.

On the fine line between documentary and fiction is Vlad Petri’s new film Between Revolutions, winner of the FIPRESCI award in the Focus section of Berlinale. Dana Bunescu returns to directing with anthropologist Cătălina Tesar, revealing the marriage traditions of the cortorari communities in The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters, and journalists Adina Popescu and Iulian Ghervase sign their third documentary, Eagles from Țaga, the story of a football coach training an eternally losing football team. Both films were awarded at the 2022 Astra Film Festival.

The competition also includes two world premiere documentaries, both directed by filmmakers from Cluj: My Muslim Husband, a story about love and prejudice in contemporary Romania by couple Daniel and Alexandra Bărnuți, and Blue Planet by Daniel Sărăcuț, a bittersweet chronicle of the rock band Dio Family reuniting for the recording of the title track.

Some of the most anticipated films of the year will have their world premiere during the Romanian Days at Transilvania IFF.22, out of competition. Freedom, director Tudor Giurgiu’s latest film, inspired by a story about the Romanian Revolution in 1989 in Sibiu, will be screened in Piața Unirii Open Air. Alexandru Solomon returns to Transilvania IFF with Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife, the preview of the long-awaited film about monk Arsenie Boca and his huge popularity. The third documentary to be screened out of competition is Dragoș Lumpan’s Last Transhumance, an ambitious artistic and ethnographic project filmed over ten years in six countries. The programme also includes the comedy Another Lottery Ticket (d. Paul Negoescu), The Dream (d. Cătălin Saizescu), the story of prisoners performing in a theatre show, and the family mountain drama Refuge (d. Liviu Mărghidan), filmed in Piatra Craiului Mountains. The two surprises in the feature film programme are The Young Dictator (d. Andi Lupu), a retro-radical docudrama about the youth of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu, and the cryptically titled S.B.C.R.D.F., inspired by a Cekhov play and directed by Iura Luncașu.

The competition selection of Romanian short films includes 16 titles, chosen from over 100 entries and grouped into three programmes. No fewer than 50 feature films have registered for this year’s Romanian Days, a record in Transilvania IFF’s history.

DMCA

PROTECTED