Six first time directors and six second time directors will be competing this year for the Transilvania International Film Festival (May 30 – June 8) trophies. The 12 films in the official competition traditionally and exclusively focused on newcomers, come from countries such as Iran, New Zealand, Great Britain, Norway, Italy, Tanzania, Bulgaria, USA, Spain, Poland or Romania. After two consecutive editions without a Romanian title in the competition, Quod Erat Demonstrandum, Andrei Gruzsniczki's black and white picture is competing for the Transilvania trophy.
„In making this year's selection for the official competition, I was extremely interested in the various forms of visual or narrative extremism tackled by the directors of the 12 films. It's not about shock or provocation for the sake of provocation, but about the ambition to tell an original story by defying convention and by going off the beaten track”, says artistic director Mihai Chirilov.
„How many fiction films – borderline documentaries – about albino Afro-Americans are there? How hard is it to make a two-character film, with time and space unity, without turning it into a theatre piece? Can you continue living while taking care of the dead? What does a blind woman see? What does a deaf-mute hear? How is a dog dreaming? What is the price of acknowledging one's own sexuality? How can one still address communism, when people today seem fed up with this topic? At what lengths are two people who lost their child willing to go, in order to recover their lost balance? And, last but not least, if time and space are like a Moebius strip, how would they look in a film?”, adds Chirilov.
The answers to all these questions are to be found, in this specific order, in: White Shadow (by Noaz Deshe), Stockholm (by Rodrigo Sorogoyen), Vis-à-vis (by Nevio Marasović), Still Life (by Uberto Pasolini), Blind (by Eskil Vogt), La voz de los silenciados (by Maximón Monihan), Paat (by Amir Toodehroosta), Floating Skyscrapers (by Tomasz Wasilewski), Quod Erat Demonstrandum (by Andrei Gruzsniczki), Viktoria (by Maya Vitkova), Everything We Loved (by Max Currie) and Fish & Cat (by Shahram Mokri).
Quod Erat Demonstrandum, produced by ICON production, recipient of the Special Jury Prize in Rome and screened at the New Directors / New Films festival in New York, has as its starting point a mathematician's decision to publish his research, in 1984, in a specialized magazine of an American university, without the Party's approval. The film stars Sorin Leoveanu, Ofelia Popii and Florin Piersic Jr. Andrei Gruzsniczki also directed „The Other Irina” (2009). Another Communism-set story is the one of the "child of the decade" in Viktoria, a Bulgarian-Romanian coproduction (Mandragora), selected in Sundance and Rotterdam and praised by international film critics. Another powerful debut film is the New-Zeeland film Everything We Loved (by Max Currie), presented at Cluj as an European premiere.
***
Transilvania International Film Festival (May 30 – June 8, 2014) is organized by Romanian Film Promotion and The Association for Film and Urban Culture, with the support of the Romanian CNC.
COMPETITION TRANSILVANIA IFF 2014
1. Paat, d. Amir Toodehroosta (Iran)
2. Everything We Loved, d. Max Currie (New Zealand)
3. Still Life, d. Uberto Pasolini (United Kingdom)
4. Blind, d. Eskil Vogt (Norway)
5. Fish and Cat, d. Shahram Mokri (Iran)
6. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, d. Andrei Gruzsniczki (Romania)
7. Stockholm, d. Rodrigo Sorogoyen (Spain)
8. White Shadow, d. Noaz Deshe (Italy – Germany - Tanzania)
9. Viktoria, d. Maya Vitkova (Bulgaria - Romania)
10. Vis-à-vis, d. Nevio Marasović (Croatia)
11. La voz de los silenciados/ The Voice of the Voiceless, d. Maximón Monihan (USA)
12. Floating Skyscrapers / Plynace wiezowce, r. Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland)
