FESTIVALS Romania
Oslo, August 31st wins Transylvania Trophy
by Stefan Dobroiu
11/06/2012 - The 11th edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) held in Cluj-Napoca from June 1-10 ended yesterday with the top award, the Transylvania trophy, going to the Norwegian production Oslo, August 31st [trailer, film focus], directed by Joachim Trier. The film will be locally released in August through local distributor Independenta Film.
The Special Jury Award went to Chapiteau-Show (Russia), directed by Sergei Loban. The more-than three hour-long feature also received the Audience Award and the Best Screenplay Award. Best Director went to Serbia's Maja Milos for her first feature, Klip (Clip) [trailer, film focus], while the Best Actor Award went to Dane body-builder/actor Kim Kold for his performance in Mads Matthiesen's Teddy Bear [trailer]. Best Cinematography went to the Chile-Netherlands co-production Thursday to Sunday, directed by Dominga Sotomayor Castillo.
Ignored by the jury lead by the Israeli director Samuel Maoz were other European productions such as Christophe Van Rompaey's Lena [trailer] (Netherlands-Belgium), Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdson's Either Way (Iceland), and Umut Dag's Kuma [trailer, film focus] (Austria).
One of the festival's most eagerly awaited competitive sidebars is Romanian Days, which showcases the newest Romanian productions. The Best Feature award went to Radu Jude's Everybody in our Family [trailer, film focus], Best Short Film Award to Nicolae Constantin Tanase's Blu, while the Best First Feature award went to Bogdan Ilie-Micu's documentary A Dream's Merchant. The jury also gave a Special Mention to actors Victoria Cocias and Constantin Cojocaru for their portrayal of Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu in Radu Gabrea's docu-drama Three Days Till Christmas.
The FIPRESCI Award went to Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur [trailer].
Director Claude Lelouch, actress Geraldine Chaplin, Hungarian actress Mari Torocsik and Romanian actor Ion Caramitru received Lifetime Achievement Awards.
