Ten filmmakers from all over the world who have been awarded the Transylvania Trophy at TIFF in its 23 editions talk about their first film.

Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), the most important film festival in Romania, started with the mission of discovering new voices in cinema. Throughout its 23 editions, the Official Competition has been dedicated to first-time or second-time directors – some of whom have returned to TIFF with other films, as jury members, or simply as friends.

We wanted to see how the Transylvania Trophy winners relate to their debut film now, after many years in which they have expanded their portfolios, gained solid presences at European film festivals, or won prestigious awards – from the Palme d’Or to Academy Award nominations – and generally have more experience than at the beginning.

“A film is the work of its time”, Thai director Anocha Suwichakornpong told us, and her answer seems to sum up the thoughts of everyone we spoke to. For most, it’s less about what they would change about their films and more about the lessons they have learned since then.

Among the filmmakers who shared their thoughts with us are Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Bogdan Mirică (Romania), Dagur Kári (Iceland), Yulene Olaizola (Mexico), Anocha Suwichakornpong (Thailand), Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Spain), Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Groß (Georgia), Marcelo Martinessi (Paraguay).

​​The 23rd edition of TIFF takes place between June 14-24. Twelve films (seven of which are debuts) are selected in the Official Competition and will compete for the top prize.

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Cristian Mungiu, Occident, 2002 (Romania)

At the first edition of TIFF in 2002, the Transylvania Trophy was awarded to director Cristian Mungiu for his debut film, Occident. A comedy that intertwines three different stories occurring within the same timeframe, featuring three characters whose paths intersect, overlap, and influence each other, often independently of their intentions. The film had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival that year.

In an article in Re:Publik magazine (closed in 2009), Mihai Chirilov, TIFF’s artistic director, wrote about Occident: “Romanians have always wanted to go to the West. Both during Ceaușescu’s time and today, for reasons we all know. Cristian Mungiu cleverly weaves the two temporal layers of the theme of leaving, without sending the story into a kitschy flashback to communist times but breaking it into three chapters that contradict and complement each other along the way. Occident takes place in our poor but gag-filled Romania, where, as one critic paradoxically put it, the longing to leave goes well with staying put. And, speaking of paradox, Occident is a film in which the elderly, whom we thought were stuck in their ways, seem to adapt more flexibly to progress: «Good things have been done, dear» says Coca Bloos, obviously referring to McDonald’s.”

After Occident, Cristian Mungiu’s name became synonymous with Cannes. He returned to the festival’s Official Competition in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, for which he received the Palme d’Or – marking the pinnacle of what is known today as the Romanian New Wave and being the only Romanian director to have received the prestigious award. For Beyond the hills (2012), actresses Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur shared the award for Best Actress. In 2016, he received the Best Director Award for Graduation, and in 2022, he returned to the competition with R.M.N.. Since 2010, he has been organising Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, bringing films and guests from the festival on the Croazette to Romania.cHere’s how he now sees his debut film after 22 years.

Cristian Mungiu, Occident

I don’t watch my films after they’re finished. Like, never. I don’t even remember them very well. I wish them all the best, so to speak, but I don’t care anymore. When I happen to see fragments from them, I watch them with some kind of embarrassment. If anything, I like to observe how they’ve been affected by the passage of time, in terms of people, settings, gestures and behaviours. Of course, if I were to go today into the editing room with the same material, it would turn out differently. Not better, just different. And there’s no point. The charm of your old films is precisely that they were made not by the current you, but by another you that has long evaporated – whose shadow still sometimes timidly crosses some frames.

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Dagur Kári, Nói Albínói, 2003 (Island)

Noi the Albino is Dagur’s feature debut that tells the story of Nói, a teenage loner, who dreams of escaping from his small fishing village in the West Fjords fjord with the girl from the filling station. The film swept over 20 awards at festivals around the world and had releases in over 30 territories. His second film Dark Horse was selected in the Un Certain Regard sidebar at Cannes Film Festival in 2005. His next film, The Good Heart, was shot in New York and it was released in 2009. Dagur´s latest feature Virgin Mountain was in the official selection at the Berlinale in 2015 and won major awards at festivals around the world.

After winning the Transilvania Trophy in 2003 with Noi the Albino, he came back at TIFF in 2018 as member of the „Oficial Competition” jury.

Dagur Kári, Noi the Albino:

I have never thought of changing my films after they are finished. Not because I don’t think things could have been done differently or better – it’s more like the films become independent individuals that you send out into the world, with their strengths and flaws, but ultimately what happens is beyond my control, somewhat. I have the same feeling about Nói Albínói. It was my first feature film, so obviously there was a lack of experience, but this is in my opinion a very valuable state to be in; when you are full of ambition and excitement, but don’t know exactly what you are doing. It creates a spirit that is hard to copy later on, when you have achieved more experience. “The beginner’s mind” is a sought after mindstate in Buddhist practice, and it applies to arts as well!

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Corneliu Porumboiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest, 2006 & Police, Adjective, 2009 (Romania)

A unique event in the history of TIFF, Corneliu Porumboiu received the Transilvania Trophy twice, for 12:08 East of Bucharest (in 2006) – also awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival – and for Police, Adjective (in 2009) – which also won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. The former is a 20th-century comedy and the latter tells the story of a provincial policeman who loses faith in the law. His 2018 documentary Infinite Football was described by critic Richard Brody in The New Yorker as an “astounding” film about one man’s attempts to change the rules of the game. His most recent effort, The Whistlers, screened at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and the director is currently preparing a new film – written and made in France.

Corneliu Porumboiu, 12:08 East of Bucharest

I avoid watching the films I’ve made because I would only see errors. There are mistakes I would perceive now because I have a different filter, a different reading compared to back then – I would think that maybe I would choose a different lens, that there’s too long a pause in the middle of a sentence, or that I could have gone for a closer shot; so, technical details. But with every film, you try to do the best you can in that moment. If you try and do that, you’re happy. I know I am. After all, that’s how I saw it then, that’s how I felt the characters, that’s what I thought cinema meant – and you have to accept yourself.

I still get reactions to 12:08 East of Bucharest. It’s a film that seems to resonate even today, and that’s a big deal. I remember one of the nicest compliments I received was at a retrospective at The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive in 2018. I didn’t enter the theatre then either. Arantxa, my wife, kept telling me: “Go in, you fool, there’s an incredible reaction!” People were laughing out loud, but I couldn’t. After the screening, someone came up to me and told me how much she loved it – both the first time and then –, that she fell in love with the characters and went to Romania because of this film. You get good reactions from friends, directors, people in the industry, but you encounter moments like these and you think, “Man, I think I’ve done my job.”

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Yulene Olaizola, Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo, 2008 (Mexic)

Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo is the first documentary to enter TIFF’s official competition, a low-budget film made by Yulene Olaizola while in film school (Iulia Blaga wrote in a post-festival article that the production cost 600 euros). While revisiting her grandmother’s house, located on the corner of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo streets in Mexico City, the director learns from her grandmother the strange story of Jorge, whom she had once hosted in her home and had mixed memories of – he made her laugh and was intelligent, but he was also a troubled man suffering from schizophrenia. His stay coincided with a period when a series of young women were murdered in the neighbourhood, raising the dilemma: could it have been him?

To date, Yulene Olaizola has made four more feature films, developing an interest in docu-fiction: Artificial Paradises (2011), Fogo (2012), which premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight, Epitaph (co-directed with Rubén Imaz, with whom she returned to TIFF in 2016), reconstructing the adventure of three Spanish conquistadors climbing the Popocatepetl volcano to 5400 meters altitude, and Tragic Jungle, which premiered in Venice in 2020.

Yulene Olaizola, Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo:

If I needed to answer this question about my first fiction film, I would probably answer that I would like to change a lot of things, but in this case, with my documentary Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo, I feel in a very different position after 16 years. As it was my first feature film, my decisions were very impulsive and intuitive, but at the same time organic. I did not have to impose my beliefs, thoughts, or aesthetic, my job was to organize and play with the reality that was already there. Of course, my decisions were all over the place, I decided to face the shooting and writing of the script almost as a fiction film, and I decided to structure the film, during one day of the life of my grandmother, and through her mundane routine, slowly narrate the hidden story of her marvelous and mysterious tenant. But once those decisions were made, everything else just came out naturally. 

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Anocha Suwichakornpong, Mundane History, 2010 (Thailand)

Anocha Suwichakornpong is currently a visiting lecturer at the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard University. Her work is informed by the socio-political history of Thailand. Mundane History, her first feature, won numerous awards including the Tiger Award at Rotterdam – and the Transylvania Trophy. The film utilizes an intensely personal story as a metaphor for Thailand’s social and political instability: a young man named Ake returns to his family home after an accident leaves him paralyzed from the waist down.

By the Time It Gets Dark, Anocha’s second feature (2016), centers around a student massacre that took place in 1976 by Thai state forces and far-right paramilitaries at Thammasat University in Bangkok. It premiered in Locarno and has screened in festivals such as Toronto, BFI London, Viennale, and Rotterdam. Her latest film, Come here, premiered at Berlinale 2021.

Anocha Suwichakornpong, Mundane History:

I wouldn’t change the final film, because it is the work of its time. Although it is not perfect, it was born out of the political situation in Thailand at the time and also my frustration about the political climate of my country. But if I could do anything differently it would be more to do with the process of making the film rather than the film itself. To take more time to shoot and edit in a way that the whole process would last much longer: I would shoot for a short period and then start editing, and then shoot a little bit more and edit a bit more, which is a way I tend to work nowadays. With Mundane history we shoot the whole film and then edit it over the course of six months. By doing this, maybe the final film would be different, but even so, I would still focus on the process rather than thinking about what I would change in it.

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Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Stockholm, 2014 (Spain)

Since Stockholm – a film about a seemingly ordinary hook-up, which gradually becomes a psychological game between two young people – made independently following a crowdfunding campaign and which won the Transilvania Trophy in 2014, the Spanish director has had an impressive trajectory, being a constant presence in the rosters of European film festivals. His 2017 short film Mother was nominated for an Academy Award, then developed two years later into a feature film that won the Best Actress award (Marta Nieto) in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen is also a long-time friend of TIFF – all his films have been present at the festival over the years: May God Save Us (2016), The Realm (2018), and his latest effort, The Beasts, a psychological thriller inspired by a real case in the province of Galicia about a French couple who move to the Spanish countryside for a life close to nature but encounter a community less idyllic than they imagined. The Beasts was in the Official Competition at Cannes 2022 and was among the most awarded Spanish films of that year.

Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Stockholm

I have thought about this question more with Stockholm than with any of our other films. And the answer can only be yes, of course! I would change the ending. Her decision to take her own life was the genesis of the film. I wanted to tell the story of how two people meet at a party, spend the night together, and the next morning one of them takes their own life. But that very decision was a condemnation for the film and for her character, for whom I now feel a fondness that would not allow me to make the same decision her. I wish I had been more free at that time and been able to consider other possibilities, another ending, another fate for her that did not involve death. Not to have been so enslaved to a “good idea” and to have explored other “less good” but more sensitive ideas.

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Bogdan Mirică, Dogs, 2016 (România, France, Bulgaria, Qatar)

Regarding Dogs, Bogdan Mirică said it was inspired by his childhood spent in the countryside, a period that stayed with him due to “the arbitrary, unpredictable nature of the violence there”. In a review in Vatra magazine, Andrei Gorzo wrote, “The film has something of an atmosphere, synthesised mainly from Cormac McCarthy novels and more or less indie American thrillers, which exoticize regions of the South, West or Midwest of the United States in an absurdist-sinister vein.” Dogs was selected in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and awarded the FIPRESCI Prize.

Eight years later, Mirică directed the HBO TV series Shadows (3 seasons, 2014-2018), becoming the most popular local TV show. In 2023, he released his second feature film, Boss, a heist movie inspired by real events, telling the story of an ambulance driver who takes part in an armed robbery with other men and gets caught up in a complicated investigation. Now, looking back on his debut, he feels it was “an honest film”.

Bogdan Mirică, Dogs:

Even after eight years since I made it, I feel Dogs is an honest film – in terms of the relationship I was trying to establish with cinema and the world in general – and that, to me, is the most important thing. Technically speaking, I could probably improve some aspects, but it’s irrelevant now – this post-factual critique (after all these years) seems didactic and regurgitated to me. Obviously, you need to analytically dissect your work when you’re preparing and actually making a film – but after all this time, critical judgement risks becoming nothing more than a romantic rebellion against who/what you were years ago. And I’d rather live with myself than against myself.

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Nana Ekvtimishvili & Simon Groß, My Happy family, 2017 (Georgia, Germany, France)

My Happy Family screened in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and had its world premiere in the Forum section at the 67th Berlinale. The plot of the film – cinematography by Romanian DoP Tudor Panduru – goes something like this: on her 52nd birthday, a wife and mother of two shocks her three-generation traditionalist family by announcing that she is leaving. Currently running on Netflix. The two directors had previously been at TIFF in 2014 with their project In Bloom, which was screened in the Supernova section.

Nana Ekvtimishvili, My Happy family:

The film is created with important elements such as time, place, and the people you work with, and it is important to avoid believing that you can do everything perfectly. While you may have a firm plan for the film, there are aspects beyond your control. In my future films, I would probably be more conscious of working with people who see and respect me as a woman and an artist. This approach not only makes it easier to achieve the desired goals but also ensures that the process is a meaningful part of my life. Life is too short to think that the end justifies the means; the means are equally important. Therefore, when asked a hypothetical question like this, I focus more on the “how” than the “what.” In retrospect, I think more about the process than the end result of the film. 

Simon Groß, My Happy family:

I am sure there are things, which I would do differently, if we were shooting “My Happy Family” in 2024. But I am not really asking the question “What”, but prefer just to go on. Filmmaking to me is more about how you tell a story rather than what you tell and this “how” has to do with you as a human being and how you see the world. And with the life you live the perception of the world and therefore the “how you tell a story” usually changes. However, each film stands for itself, stands for a certain moment in the time of your life and therefore makes sense like it is.

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Marcelo Martinessi, Las Herederas, 2018 (Paraguay)

Las Herederas was in the official selection of the 68th Berlinale, where it received several awards: lead actress Ana Brun won the Silver Bear for Best Actress, director Marcelo Martinessi received the Silver Bear, the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Giuseppe Becce Award. The film tells the story of two women who have lived together for 30 years in an inherited house in Asunción and run out of money. When one of them is jailed for attempted fraud, the other must rebuild her life. Las Herederas is Marcelo Martinessi’s first fiction film – he previously made several documentaries and short films – and he is currently in post-production with his second feature film.

Marcelo Martinessi, Las Herederas

I’ve worked with the same creative team for a long time. We’ve made several short films and The Heiresses is our first feature. It’s a small, intimate film, somehow very coherent with the real possibilities of filming in our country. So, today, when I look back, it’s hard for me to say if I would change anything about that first step, perhaps not. It was key to better understand cinema as a language as well as a collective process. 

Anca Vancu

Journalist. She worked for ten years at Adevărul and DoR as a reporter and for a while in communication. At Films in Frame, she coordinates the whole team with Laure, while also editing some of the articles about the film industry, trying to always find interesting angles to tell a story.