09/04/2014 - The 13th edition of the festival will close on 8 June with Silver Bear winner Boyhood

A scene from the 2013 edition of the TIFF (© Chris Nemes)

The 13^th edition of Romania’s most important film event, the Transilvania International Film Festival, will kick off in the city of Cluj-Napoca on 30 May, with an outdoor screening of Stephen Frears’ Philomena [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stephen Frears
film profile]. The festival will wrap ten days later with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, after showing approximately 200 films in more than 15 venues.

The organisers have already announced parts of the selection, with Andrzej Wajda’s Walesa: Man of Hope [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], Hans Petter Moland’s In Order of Disappearance [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hans Petter Moland
film profile], Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianfranco Rosi
film profile], János Szász’s The Notebook [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Janos Szász
film profile], Lukas Moodysson's We Are the Best! [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] and Mariana Rondón’s Bad Hair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mariana Rondón
film profile] set for multiple screenings in the festival’s traditional sidebars, SuperNova, Unirii Square, the Hungarian Day, and What’s Up, Doc?. Popular sidebars Shadows and No Limit will soon announce their selection of shocking or cutting-edge features and shorts.

As is the case every year, there will be three Focus sections, all screening films from a certain country. TIFF will also have a new section, Cinema Mon Amour, featuring titles about the love for cinema. The sidebar’s selection will be led by Alexandru Belc’s documentary Cinema, Mon Amour [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alexandru Belc
film profile], which depicts the dire state of old cinemas in Romania and promotes the Save the Big Screen campaign (see news).

A total of 12 debut or second features will be competing for the festival’s awards. The obvious choice regarding a possible Romanian feature in the running for the Transilvania Trophy would be Andrei Gruzsniczki’s black-and-white second feature Quod Erat Demonstrandum [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Andrei Gruzsniczki
interview: Andrei Gruzsniczki
film profile], winner of the Special Jury Prize last year in Rome. The film will be released domestically in October.

Regardless of its presence in the competition, Quod Erat Demonstrandum will without doubt be part of the festival’s Romanian Days section, which showcases the latest local productions. Corneliu Porumboiu’s experimental documentary The Second Game [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which screened in the Forum sidebar of the Berlinale, and Vlad Petri’s documentary Bucharest, Where Are You?, selected at the Rotterdam IFF in the My Own Private Europe sidebar, are only the first titles to have been announced.