The best films of the past year come to TIFF 2015
Thought-provoking films which made the top ten lists of critics from around the world and won the most important international awards of the year will be screened as part of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) selection.
The 14th edition will take place between May 29 and June 7, turning Cluj into a city of screenings, concerts, exhibitions, debates and meetings with filmmakers.
The most films gathered annually by Artistic Director Mihai Chirilov in this best of are to be found in two of the most anticipated sections of the festival: Supernova and No Limit.
The first confirmed Supernova titles are Magical Girl (by Carlos Vermut), main winner in San Sebastian, an impressive neo-noir about a father submitted to a series of strange blackmails which he gives in to because he wants to grant his cancer-dying daughter one last wish. Vie Sauvage (by Cédric Kahn), staring Mathieu Kassovitz, is the recipient of the San Sebastian Special Jury Prize and tells the story of a father so obsessed with life out of the big city, that he takes his two children from their mother's side and travels with them around the world for 11 years.
The Fool/ Durak (by Iuri Bikov), the most influential Russian film of last year next to Leviathan, is the desperate chronicle of a profoundly corrupt country. Artiom Bistrov won the Best Actor award in Locarno. Life in a Fishbowl (by Baldvin Zophoníasson), Island's submissions to the Foreign Language Oscars and the country's highest grossing film of the year, follows the crossing destinies of three different people. A Spanish True Detective, the cop thriller La isla mínima (by Alberto Rodríguez) won the Best Film Award, in addition to other nine trophies, at the 2014 Goya Awards.
From the Cannes line-up, we can mention Force Majeure (by Ruben Ostlund), a Golden Globe nominee in the Best Foreign Film category, Clouds of Sils Maria (by Olivier Assayas), the personal drama of an actress at the end of her carrier, starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart, Timbuktu (by Abderrahmane Sissako), the main Prix Cesar winner (seven trophies), a film about the dramatic change in a city taken over by jihadists.
Famed French auteur François Ozon questions the borders between genders in a new and very suspenseful film, The New Girlfriend, which world-premiered in Toronto. In Sand Dollars/ Dólares de Arena, directors Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas caringly explore the complex relationship between a poor Dominican girl and an old European lady played by Geraldine Chaplin – the Lifetime Achievement recipient of TIFF 2013.
In the No Limit section, film aficionados find the "darker" and more radical films of the year, films that push the boundaries of cinema and induce contemplation. In The Duke of Burgundy, a sensational film, "sexy and bizarre" according to „The Telegraph”, two women isolated in a small house by the forest play a complex erotic game. The film is directed by Peter Strickland, who also made Katalin Varga (2009), which was shot in Romania, and Berberian Sound Studio (2012).
The controversial documentary by Ulrich Seidl, In the Basement, screened in the Venice competition, brings to the surface the strangest quirks of the Austrians, from the Third Reich fanatics to sexual fetishes. Another Austria-based film, and also selected in Venice, in the psychological horror Goodnight Mommy (by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala): twin brothers suspect that something's amiss with their mother. The Forbidden Room (by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson), a „demented feast of the cinephiles”, according to „The Hollywood Reporter”, comes to TIFF straight from the Forum section of the Berlinale.
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Transilvania International Film Festival (Mai 29 – June 7, 2015) is organized by Romanian Film Promotion and Asociaţia pentru Film și Cultură Urbană, with the support of the national Film centre.
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