Transilvania at 25: How the Romanian Festival’s Founders Keep Its Bold, ‘Subversive,’ ‘All-or-Nothing’ Spirit Alive

With memories of Cristian Mungiu’s second Palme d’Or, for the Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve-starring “Fjord,” still fresh just weeks after the director’s latest Cannes triumph, you’d be hard-pressed to recall a time when Romanian filmmakers weren’t feted on world cinema’s biggest stages. Unless, that is, you asked the organizers of the Transilvania Intl. Film Festival, whose 25th edition takes place June 12 – 21 in the medieval city of Cluj.

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When the festival debuted in 2002, Romania was largely a backwater in the eyes of even the most ardently global cinephiles. It would be three years before Cristi Puiu’s audacious black comedy “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” would herald the arrival of a new cinematic movement in Cannes, and two more before Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” would win the director his first Palme. Until then, the Romanian New Wave had yet to register so much as a ripple, while the teetering domestic movie industry was on the brink of collapse. 

“No Romanian films. No proper infrastructure. Cinemas were going down. No state involvement, financially,” recalls TIFF artistic director Mihai Chirilov. It was in part to bolster local moviemakers that festival founder and president Tudor Giurgiu decided to launch Romania’s first international film event, both “to offer better exposure to our films and to bring decision-makers and use the festival as a launchpad for new projects,” he says.

Still, the ambitions on the eve of opening night were modest, to say the least. “We didn’t have a five-year plan,” says Chirilov. “We just wanted to survive the seven days of the first edition.”

Looking back two decades later, Giurgiu, laughing, suggests the first TIFF was arguably “the best-organized edition” ever mounted. “It was disciplined, rigorous,” he says. “Two screening rooms, seven days, perfect size.” As opening night approached, Giurgiu and Chirilov debated programming details on the overnight train from Bucharest, bumping along in a sleeper compartment with dual bunk beds. “It was very romantic,” Giurgiu says.

Pointing to the highlights of that first edition — including David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” Michael Haneke’s “The Piano Teacher” and Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” which are among the films screening this week during a “25 Years Later” retrospective — Chirilov insists he and Giurgiu “were crazy enough to not think about consequences, hence the really edgy programming.”

“It was really shocking and provocative,” he says. “We came with a lot of electroshocks. We didn’t give a fuck.”

That maverick spirit is what continues to animate the Transilvania Film Festival 25 years later, with Chirilov insisting he “still want[s] to keep this sense of freedom, of surprise that we had in the early years.” “The challenge is not to lose that innocence from the very first edition,” he says. “It was all or nothing.”

The festival kicks off June 12 with “3 Days in September,” the latest from Giurgiu — a veteran filmmaker alongside his TIFF duties — following its world premiere earlier this year in Rotterdam. Centered around a daring, 65-minute single take, the film is a real-time portrait of a woman’s psychological unraveling — and eventual renewal — after her fiancé’s mistress crashing her wedding. Giurgiu’s previous films include the documentary “Nasty,” a rollicking portrait of the ’70s Romanian tennis bad boy Ilie Năstase, which premiered at Cannes, and “Freedom,” a tense drama set during the Romanian revolution, which won the audience award for best Romanian film at the 2023 Transilvania Film Festival. 

The main competition this year features “a mix as polarizing as the world it comes from,” according to Chirilov, with 12 titles competing for the Transilvania Trophy. Among them are Kazakh director Aitore Zholdaskali’s scintillating, hard-boiled debut “Sicko,” a domestic box-office sensation following its Rotterdam premiere; Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr.’s groundbreaking, semi-autobiographical period drama “My Father’s Shadow,” the first film from the West African nation to premiere in Cannes; Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani’s long-awaited debut “Titanic Ocean,” coming off its Un Certain Regard premiere; and Dutch debutante Muriel d’Ansembourg’s edgy portrait of the porn industry “Truly Naked,” which premiered in Berlin’s Perspectives competition. 

Other highlights of this year’s festival include “Minotaur,” the latest from two-time Academy Award nominee Andrei Zvyagintsev (“Leviathan,” “Loveless”), the Grand Prix winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Prolific homegrown provocateur Radu Jude (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”), meanwhile, arrives with his Directors’ Fortnight premiere “Diary of a Chambermaid,” as well as last year’s vulgar vampire riff “Dracula,” which debuted in Locarno. Also playing is Pedro Almodóvar’s latest, “Bitter Christmas,” a tragicomedy from the legendary auteur, which vied for the Palme d’Or this year in Cannes.

That film, as well as the classic Romanian comedy “Operation Monster,” directed by Manole Marcus, will screen at the open-air cinema at Bánffy Castle in Bonțida, on the outskirts of Cluj. An evocative backdrop for one of the festival’s most anticipated events each year, the “Weekend at the Castle” showcases how TIFF has capitalized on its success in Cluj to “build an entire network” of screenings, events and cultural happenings that have “helped expand the festival in a very organic manner,” according to Chirilov, while allowing it to stick to its core principles — above all the conviction of who the festival is meant to serve. 

“We are an audience festival,” says Chirilov. “Without an audience, you don’t exist. [Transilvania] still has an audience that wants to be provoked. They don’t come here just to be patted on their shoulders. Most people go to festivals to find what they expect, to be in a safe space, in a comfort zone. TIFF is not a comfort zone. It’s not a safe place. 

“Maybe it’s not the right thing to say, but I don’t want the festival to be a safe space,” he continues. “And this is hard to do nowadays. You have to work a bit harder to keep your subversive sense, to fight conformism, to fight this global sanitization of film festivals.”

The 25th Transilvania Intl. Film Festival runs June 12 – 21.