Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), the most important film event in Romania, takes place between June 9-18 and its packed program hides many surprises. Since we know what it’s like to browse through the brochure trying to decide where to go and what to see, we’ve picked out 10 must-attend events and screenings to make your life easier.

1. Romanian Days

The section dedicated to Romanian productions brings important premieres, films released in the past year, or titles worth revisiting.

Alexandru Solomon’s long-awaited documentary Arsenie. An Amazing Afterlife, about monk Arsenie Boca and his huge popularity, will be presented in world premiere.

Another Lottery Ticket (dir. Paul Negoescu), the sequel to Two Lottery Tickets, Day of the Tiger (dir. Andrei Tănase), Freedom (dir. Tudor Giurgiu), and Blue Planet (dir. Dani Sărăcuț) will also have their world or national premiere during the Romanian Days at TIFF.22.

Other must-see films include:

→ Boss (dir. Bogdan Mirică) – Bogdan, an ambulance driver, takes part in an armed robbery together with three men he barely knows. But the heist goes wrong and it’s only going to get worse for Bogdan;

→ Between Revolutions (dir. Vlad Petri) – In the 1970s Bucharest, Zahra and Maria strike up a close friendship while studying at university. As political turmoil brews in Iran, Zahra is forced to return home. The young women keep their friendship alive through letters;

→ Men of Deeds (dir. Paul Negoescu) – Ilie, a small-town police chief, doesn’t dream big, only wishes to buy an orchard and a house and live a simple life. But things don’t go so smoothly when dubious things happen in the village. The film will have a special screening for visually impaired people;

→ The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters (dir. Cătălina Tesar, Dana Bunescu) – The documentary explores the matrimonial deals within a Roma community in Transylvania, where only boys inherit the family’s badge, the chalice. Therefore, Peli and Nina struggle to birth a son, or else their arranged union will end;

→ Eagles from Țaga (dir. Iulian Manuel Ghervas, Adina Popescu) – An intimate look at a 5th league football team, where passion brings the players and the coach back together after each loss;

→ To the North (dir. Mihai Mincan) – On a transatlantic ship, Joel, a religious Filipino sailor, discovers Dumitru, a Romanian stowaway. Joel’s religion compels him to help, but it comes with many risks.

The Romanian Days program is rounded off by 16 Romanian short films grouped into three sections, which you can learn about here, here, and here.

2. Geoffrey Rush, the special guest of TIFF.22

The actor with a career spanning over 40 years and roles in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Shakespeare in Love, The Best Offer, and The King’s Speech will be honoured this year at TIFF with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

He will also attend a special screening of the film that brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor, Shine (dir. Scott Hicks, 1996), which tells the story of David, a gifted pianist who, driven by his father and teachers, suffers a mental breakdown and never gets to achieve his true potential. Years later, he returns to the stage, to the delight of the public. The screening will take place on June 16.

3. Knit’s Island (dir. Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h)

Somewhere on the Internet, there is a space of 250 square kilometers in which individuals gather to simulate a survivalist fiction. Under the guise of avatars, a film crew enters this place and spends 963 hours trying to get to know the “locals”. Slowly the players drop their masks to reveal their daily lives, their relationships of love and friendship.

Flavia Dima describes it as “a film that applies a cinematic logic and perspective to the virtual environment, not allowing itself to be seduced by the game’s representational mechanics and thus adopting a somewhat passive stance, but applying an active gaze to it, looking for frames and counter-frames, cropping static shots, close-ups or panning the landscape, using the eyes of the virtual avatars to act as cameras.”

The film will be presented in the What’s Up, Doc? section.

4. Like an Island / L’îlot (dir. Tizian Büchi)

Also showing in the What’s up, doc? section is L’îlot (dir. Tizian Büchi), a documentary about two watchmen guarding a river that runs through a neighbourhood in Lausanne.

“L’Îlot is neither the first nor the last documentary to chart the territory of a neighbourhood – what makes it special is the way it avoids the facile pitfalls of social diagnosis (refusing to search for it outright, and leaving it to manifest itself naturally in front of the camera) and those of a conventional, easy-to-identify cinematic form,” writes Flavia Dima in her review for Films in Frame.

5. Banger. (dir. Adam Sedlák)

Shot entirely with an iPhone 12 Pro Max, Banger. tells the story of Alex, who quits selling drugs to become a professional rapper. And he even has a chance to record a hit with a famous rapper, but there is one obstacle: the promised collaboration is time-limited and costs a ton of money. And so Alex embarks on a race against time that will determine his future.

The director says that the choice to shoot the film with a phone was not budget-related but to make it look like a “street film”, just as rap is street music.

Banger. is presented in the Official Competition.

6. Close-up Jean-Luc Godard

One can never say that they have watched Godard’s films too many times. That is precisely why the most important ones can be revisited at TIFF.22, where they will be shown in restored versions: À bout de souffle / Breathless (1960), Le mépris / Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), La Chinoise (1967), Weekend (1967), Sauve qui peut (la vie) / Every Man for Himself (1980), Soigne ta droite / Keep Your Right Up (1987).

Theoretician, radical film critic and intellectual, and constantly eager to experiment, Godard was and remains to this day an astonishing filmmaker, and the French New Wave, a movement that definitively changed the approach to filmmaking. “Godard was a free man — free to abandon narrative in favor of essay films, free to abandon stars in favor of quotations and collages, but also free to abandon nuance in favor of momentary certainties, circumstantial blindness, groundless challenges,” says Victor Morozov in his portrait of the director for Films in Frame.

7. Close-up Sidney Lumet

TIFF.22 invites us to step into the cinematic universe of one of the most prolific American directors of the modern era, Sidney Lumet. The audiences in Cluj-Napoca will have the chance to see six restored works by the renowned filmmaker: 12 Angry Men (1957), Fail Safe (1964), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), and Running on Empty (1988). The program is inspired by the retrospective dedicated to the director by the Lumière Film Festival in 2022.

8. 100 years of Gopo and Disney Animation

TIFF dedicates special screenings in celebration of 100 years since the birth of Ion Popescu-Gopo and the Walt Disney Company. Mini-Cini: Little Gopo invites the audience to discover the magic of the Romanian director’s animations. 100 Years of Disney Animation is a 90 minute-compilation of some of the most wonderful cartoons ever created. 

9. My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock (dir. Mark Cousins)

More than a century after Hitchcock’s first feature, Mark Cousins examines the oeuvre of one of the greatest directors of all time from a contemporary perspective and through a unique approach, using the filmmaker’s own voice to revisit his films.

10. Cine-concert “The Unknown”

The Unknown is a 1927 cult film by Tod Browning, which tells the story of Alonzo, a circus knife thrower and killer on the run. He wants to win over Nanon, his stage partner, and he is willing to do anything for it.

The screening will be accompanied live by Stephen Horne, regarded as one of the leading silent film accompanists, and Martin Pyne, composer, percussionist, and musical improviser, playing mainly vibraphone, drums, and other percussion instruments.

Melissa Antonescu

Writer, photographer and videographer. For Films in Frame she writes news about the latest happenings in the film world and brings to the readers' attention the productions that can be seen at the cinema. When she's not writing articles, she's photographing people in a small studio or searching for new cake recipes.