This year’s edition of Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest will take place between October 21-30.

LFDC.13 brings Swedish cinema into focus. One of the most anticipated films this year is Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund), winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2022. Distributed in Romania starting on November 11th by Independența Film, Triangle of Sadness will have its national premiere at the festival. A famous model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean) are invited on a luxury cruise for the very wealthy, led by a rakish sea captain (Woody Harrelson). What at first seems Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a deserted island and fighting for survival.

Also coming from Sweden is Tarik Saleh’s Boy from Heaven, winner of the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes 2022.

Opening the 13th edition of Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest is Alexandru Belc’s feature film debut, Metronom, which won the Best Director Award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes 2022.

Special guests

Every year, the festival promises meetings with prominent figures of contemporary cinema. Among the special guests expected this fall in Bucharest are Luc Dardenne, Arnaud Desplechin, Tarik Saleh and Thomas Salvador. The public will have the chance to meet them at the screenings of their films, which will be followed by discussions and Q&A sessions.

Thomas Salvador will also hold an open talk in two parts: a discussion, moderated by film critic Ionuț Mareș, about his latest effort, La Montagne, which follows Pierre, an engineer leaving Paris for the Alps, where he settles and vows never to return to civilisation. A second discussion will be moderated by Mihai Zotta, a forestry engineer, with an experience of over 20 years in the field of nature conservation.

Autumn Previews

Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest celebrates the many successes of Romanian cinema by bringing in national premiere films awarded in Cannes, Venice, Sarajevo, Annecy or Oberhausen:

To the North (dir. Mihai Mincan)– In 1996, a faithful Filipino sailor discovers a Romanian passenger stowed away on the ship he is working on and decides to protect him. The film had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti competition section, where it received the Independent Film Critics’ Award – Bisato d’Oro – for Best Film, awarded outside the section.

Men of Deeds (dir. Paul Negoescu) – Ilie is a policeman in a village plagued by corruption. Following a series of violent events he witnesses, he is forced to make important decisions at work and in his personal life. The film was selected at the Sarajevo, Namur, and Warsaw film festivals and awarded the Best Director prize at the LIFFE festival in Serbia.

The Island (dir. Anca Damian) – The animation revolves around Robinson and Friday, “a doctor with the best intentions and a modern-day refugee in a reality where the world is collapsing,” as the director describes it. The film was presented at festivals such as Busan, Rotterdam and Göteborg. You can read its review by Flavia Dima for Films in Frame here.

Too Close (dir. Botond Püsök) – What happens when fear becomes a force? “I was amazed to discover how people think about child abuse and abuse in general: they know it’s something terrible, but so remote at the same time that they would never imagine it could happen to someone close to them. So I knew from the beginning that one of the biggest challenges of this film would be how to tell a story about such a horrific issue that many people are reluctant to connect with,” says the filmmaker. The film was presented in the Sarajevo IFF selection.

Whose Dog Am I (dir. Robert Lakatos) – Politics is depicted as a world where citizens are dogs and politicians are dog breeders.

The Eagles of Țaga (dir. Iulian Manuel Ghervas, Adina Popescu) – The documentary focuses on the members of the Vulturul Ţaga football team, officially the weakest team in Romania. However, the players haven’t lost either their hope or their passion for the game and they continue to play football.

The film screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions, and the audience will vote for their favorite film.

The following titles will be screened outside the competition:

Alis (dir. Clare Weiskopf, Nicolás van Hemelryck) – The Colombia-Chile-Romania co-production aims to answer the question, “How can one imagine a future when one is born without opportunities?”. The film was presented at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Reflections on Romania – 5 Faces of Identity (dir. Andrei-Nicolae Teodorescu) – The film focuses on five Romanian personalities working in five different fields.

LFDC.13 also brings on the big screen seven important Romanian short films: Sasha (dir. Serghei Chiviriga), Hidden Places (dir. Teona Galgoţiu), I Was Sleepwalking When I Saw All Those Colours (dir. Bogdan Balla), Amok (dir. Balázs Turai), Flying Sheep (dir. Alexandra Gulea), May the Earth Become the Sky (dir. Ana Vîjdea), Appalachia (dir. Roxana Stroe).

For more details, visit the festival website and Facebook page. Tickets are available on Eventbook.

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.