20-05-2008

Boogie heads to Transylvania film festival

By FNE Staff

    Following its debut in the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes, Radu Muntean's Boogie will make its Romanian bow as part of the Romanian Days section at the seventh edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival, running May 30-8 in Cluj Napoca. The section also spotlights award winner Bridge of Flowers (Wiesbaden's goEast Grand Prize), a documentary film by Thomas Ciulei, and a selection of prize winning short films.

    Along with screenings of new films, Romanian Days, scheduled for June 5-7, encompasses workshops, seminars and meetings between Romanina filmmakers, producers, sales agents and international industry representatives and press.

    TIFF (www.tiff.ro) opens with Michael Haneke's U.S. remake of Funny Games, preceded by Fatza balbena care rade, a short film written by Doru Lupeanu which won the HBO National Scriptwriting Competition last year. Haneke will be the festival's opening night guest. HBO will again present a day of its award-winning productions, along with this year's writing competition. This year, 56 feature length and 180 short film scripts were entered for the competition, which awards $3,000 and $1,500 for the winning film in each respective category. Winners will be announced at the closing ceremony on June 7.

    TIFF's other regular sections include the "best of fests" Supernova section, Doc'n'Roll (music themed documentaries), and the Competition for first and second feature films only. Among this year's special sections, chosen by festival director Mihai Chirilov, are a focus on Russian cinema, Remade in Bollywood (Indian remakes of famous films), and Real Time (films shot in real time without edits). The closing gala concludes with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Tamara Buciuceanu-Botez, known as the first lady of Romanian comedy. A shortened version of the festival will be presented in Sibiu June 11-15.