When Transilvania Intl. Movie Pageant founder Tudor Giurgiu started sketching the blueprint for the primary version 25 years in the past, the then up-and-coming director knew he needed the nation’s first worldwide movie occasion to be greater than only a showcase of recent Romanian cinema.
“I was dreaming that we could not just screen our films but present our upcoming projects to decision-makers. To have industry here,” says Giurgiu, who was nonetheless a number of years away from making his directorial debut with the 2006 Berlinale premiere “Love Sick.” The prospects for Romanian filmmakers have been, by his personal admission, “shitty”; Giurgiu even thought-about emigrating searching for greener pastures.
As an alternative, he determined to confront the problem of “how to offer better exposure to our films” whereas additionally introducing an occasion that would serve “as a launchpad for new [Romanian] projects.” Hardly two years later, TIFF launched its Romanian Days trade part, and it rapidly turned what Giurgiu describes because the “flagship initiative of the festival.”
Within the years that adopted, Romanian Days would develop alongside its burgeoning trade, which crashed the worldwide stage in 2005, when Cristi Puiu’s black comedy “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” received the Un Sure Regard Prize on the Cannes Movie Pageant, and have become entrenched as a bona fide cinematic motion two years later when Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” received the director the primary of his two Palmes d’Or.
“It was this very interesting synchronicity between the splash of the Romanian films in Cannes with everything which was later branded as the Romanian New Wave, and the fact that the festival was growing very quickly,” says Giurgiu. “We became not just a 10-day showcase for Romanian cinema, [but] a year-round platform for promoting local cinema.”
Within the wake of these early Cannes triumphs, the Transilvania Film Festival turned one of many hottest tickets on the worldwide circuit, as programmers, gross sales brokers, distributors and different trade professionals scrambled to find the following Puiu or Mungiu. Twenty years later, Romanian Days “remain[s] committed to supporting emerging voices,” significantly from the host nation, based on newly minted trade head Ami Geger. But the platform has grown into a very worldwide occasion, increasing the geographical footprint of the international locations it serves and widening its aperture to embrace the numerous traits and challenges dealing with the worldwide trade.
“This year’s program reflects many sides of filmmaking today, from development and financing to international distribution, music, series production and the opportunities, challenges and innovations that come with AI,” Geger says. “Some sessions look at broader trends and conversations around the international industry, while others focus more directly on the realities, challenges and opportunities within the Romanian industry.”
This system’s centerpiece stays the Transilvania Pitch Cease, a co-production discussion board open to first- and second-time filmmakers from Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, Georgia and — for the very first time — Cyprus and Albania. Among the many movies supported by the TPS since its first version are “Apples,” by Greece’s Christos Nikou, which opened the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Movie Pageant in 2020; “La Civil,” by Romania’s Teodora Ana Mihai, which received the Prize of Braveness within the Cannes Movie Pageant’s Un Sure Regard sidebar in 2021; Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi’s “Butterfly Vision,” which bowed in Un Sure Regard in 2022; and Mihai Mincan’s “To the North,” which was chosen in Venice that very same 12 months.
This 12 months’s choice contains new initiatives from Ukrainian filmmaker Philip Sotnychenko, whose debut, the crime thriller “La Palisiada,” was a Rotterdam premiere in 2023, and Turkish director Belkıs Bayrak, whose first characteristic, “Gülizar,” performed Toronto and San Sebastian two years in the past. Additionally collaborating within the discussion board is veteran Romanian cinematographer Adrian Silișteanu, presenting his characteristic debut, “Another Story About My Son,” and first-time filmmaker Octavian Şaramet, with the folk-horror mission “Sun Offspring.”
“Overall, the selection brings together a strong mix of established filmmakers preparing their next features and emerging voices with distinctive, internationally relevant stories,” says Geger.
Quite a lot of new wrinkles have been launched to the 2026 version of Romanian Days, together with a E-book to Display program, open to Romanian authors, publishers and administrators, that appears to faucet into the rising world demand for adaptable IP. The Works in Progress screenings, in the meantime, have been expanded to showcase seven Romanian characteristic movies in post-production, which will likely be bolstered by the launch this 12 months of a €30,000 ($35,000) prize awarded by HBO.
Highlights from the trade program, which takes place from June 18 – 20, embrace a keynote handle from veteran producer and European Movie Academy chair Ada Solomon on the way forward for European movie financing, and a concentrate on new funding fashions for European sequence. A number of classes may even highlight the fast-moving developments round using AI within the trade, whereas this system is rounded out by various masterclasses from filmmakers together with acclaimed Romanian auteur Corneliu Porumboiu — the topic of a retrospective at this 12 months’s Transilvania competition — and maverick U.Ok. director Ben Wheatley, on the town to advertise his newest movie, “Bulk.”
Above all, Geger says she hopes the trade classes will function a catalyst “to create alternatives for significant alternate and connection — between native and worldwide professionals, between completely different generations of filmmakers, and between folks working throughout completely different areas of the trade.
“We see TIFF as a place where these conversations can happen naturally, where ideas can be shared openly, and where new collaborations can take shape,” she says. “By bringing together both international perspectives and discussions that speak directly to the Romanian industry, we hope to create a program that is both inspiring and genuinely useful. If participants leave TIFF with fresh ideas, new connections and renewed energy for their projects and careers, then we’ll feel we’ve achieved what we set out to do.”
The Transilvania Intl. Movie Pageant runs June 12 – 21.
Pictured: Tudor Giurgiu (left) and Ami Geger
