TIFF’s strong international connections and national highlights: The most important platform for Romanian cinema

The 24th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Cluj-Napoca was successful, even though Romania is facing an economic crisis, following a political crisis. The organizers of the festival (the Romanian Film Promotion Association and the Transilvania Film Festival Association) managed to secure the necessary funding for offering once more the local audience an exquisite selection of over 200 films (fiction, non-fiction, and animated features and shorts) and many memorable film-related experiences, as well as providing the best conditions to more than 1,000 national and international guests (among which, as stars of the edition, Hungarian director Béla Tarr and Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros).

Over the years, TIFF has developed strong connections with international filmmakers who have confirmed the taste of Mihai Chirilov, the festival’s artistic director, and his selection committee, and who have gladly returned to Cluj with their latest works. For example, Mahdi Fleifel, who this year won TIFF’s biggest award, the Transilvania Trophy, with To a Land Unknown, a powerful refugee drama raising ethical questions, who had previously been to Cluj in 2013 with his feature-length documentary A World Not Ours (Alam laysa lana), presented in the then-non-competitive section “What’s Up, Doc?”, and Noaz Deshe, the 2025 recipient of the Best Directing Award for Xoftex, another refugee drama, but with fantastic undertones and mise-en-abyme elements, was also selected in the festival’s main competition with his debut feature, White Shadow, in 2014.

Every year, TIFF proposes the largest and most significant showcase of recent Romanian cinema, particularly in the “Romanian Days” section, whose 2025 competition was won by two period pieces set in 1989: Bogdan Mureșanu’s network tragicomedy The New Year That Never Came (Anul Nou care n-a fost) – Best Feature Award (the director’s first feature was also named Most Popular Romanian Film at the festival) – and Andra MacMasters’s montage film Bright Future (Viitor luminos) – the “Romanian Days” Debut Award. If this year no Romanian production was selected in TIFF’s main competition (reserved for first and second-time directors), Eugen Jebeleanu’s second feature, Internal Zero (Interior zero), an adaptation of Lavinia Braniște’s homonymous novel, was part of the “Smart 7” competition, launched in 2023 to support emerging European directors; the selected films are screened, besides Transilvania, in six other relevant international film festivals across the old continent: Vilnius Kino Pavasaris (Lithuania), IndieLisboa (Portugal), Filmadrid (Spain), New Horizons (Poland), Reykjavik (Iceland), and Thessaloniki (Greece). There were also no Romanian films in the “What’s Up, Doc?” competition (nevertheless, the Romanian documentary scene keeps on growing and diversifying, which was proven by the six documentary features included in the “Romanian Days” competition, evaluated by our FIPRESCI jury) and the newly-introduced competitive section “Teen Spirit”, addressed at the young audience (too rarely served by the national film industry after 1989). “Romanian Days” also featured, out of competition, several sought-after screenings, as were the world premiere of Tudor Giurgiu’s The Spruce Forest (Pădurea de molizi) or the national premiere of Radu Jude’s Berlinale-awarded Kontinental ’25. The national section’s programme of short films presented both Cannes-selected films by emerging directors (Andrei Tache-Codreanu, Vasile Todinca) and new short films by reputed directors, such as Igor Cobileanski, Florin Șerban or Bogdan Mureșanu, who, following his worldwide success The New Year That Never Came, made another remarkable debut in the field of animated film, with the short The Magician (Magicianul), world premiered some weeks before TIFF in the competition of the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Last but not least, TIFF marked the 100-year anniversary of FIPRESCI with three special screenings, introduced by our jury, of films awarded with FIPRESCI prizes. One of them was The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (Moartea domnului Lăzărescu), launched in 2005 at the Cannes Festival, where it won the “Un Certain Regard” Award, followed by FIPRESCI prizes at the fourth edition of TIFF and the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Relaunched after two decades, Cristi Puiu’s second feature is arguably the most important Romanian film ever made, since the worldwide-famed New Romanian Cinema started there.

By Mihai Fuger
Edited by Birgit Beumers
Copyright FIPRESCI