Transilvania Film Festival Revamps Industry Program to Boost New Talents
variety.comChristopher Vourlias When Dumitrana Lupu took over as the head of the Transilvania Film Festival’s industry program earlier this year, she was tasked with a two-fold mission of continuing to discover and boost emerging talents from the host country, as well as ensuring that the Romanian festival remains a vital meeting place for filmmakers from Southeastern Europe and the surrounding region.To do so, she and the organizing team revamped some of TIFF’s industry sections while ensuring that long-running programs provide continuity for a festival that unspools its 21st edition from June 17 – 26.With a focus on the Black Sea region and its neighboring countries, the Transilvania Pitch Stop has emerged as one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for the region’s filmmakers.
Among the films supported by the TPS since its inception in 2014 include “Apples,” by Greece’s Christos Nikou, which opened the Horizons sidebar of the Venice Film Festival; “The Man Who Surprised Everyone,” a Horizons prize winner from Russia’s Alexey Chupov; and “La Civil,” by Teodora Ana Mihai, which won the Prize of Courage in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar last year.
The selection features 10 films from first- and second-time directors searching for European partners. Lupu admits that this year’s call for projects was not easy: among the countries eligible to participate are Ukraine – Maksym Nakonechnyi, a 2019 participant, bowed his debut “Butterfly Vision” (pictured) in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section this year – as well as neighboring countries that have been disrupted by the ongoing war.
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