Transylfilmmania
Last year I went to Cluj-Napoca in the first week. It appeared as I was leaving that just about everybody else was turning up. This year I’m coming in the second week. Perhaps everyone will have already left.
Either way, it’s a pleasure to return on Monday 12th June to the gorgeous, UNESCO-approved, open-air shrine to cinema, located in the heart of Transylvania. Between the cheap drinks and endless platefuls of assorted meats, two strands make the trip worth it: the Competition, dedicated to first and second-time directors (entirely my ballpark); and What’s Up Doc, their excellent hybrid documentary section (also a Journey Into Cinema kind of thing).
I could highlight the films I intend to watch, stretching from late-night screenings of Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), to the first Moldovan film in the competition, to Fatih Akin’s Rheingold (2022), to a special Tod Browning screening with live orchestra, or you could simply trust me to explore the city as I go, once again untethered by editorial constraints (pitches rejected :D) — free to riff on culture, architecture, gastronomy, and perhaps, at the end of it all, some cinema.
TIFF started 22 years ago, in conjunction with the most exciting film movement in recent European history. But is the Romanian Wave still alive? Are open-air screenings — obscured by smokers, chatterers, people queuing for drinks — actually better than a dark cinema? Will I find that amazing Romanian/Hungarian dish I had in Oradea last year but forgot to write the name down? These are all questions worth… subscribing for. Put your email in now for dispatches from the heart of Balkan/Eastern/Southern/European cinema. And if you already subscribe, thank you: the emails are coming.