22 feature films are competing in the two international competitions of the 22nd Transilvania International Film Festival (Cluj-Napoca, June 9-18). Directed by first and second-time filmmakers, 12 of them are competing for the Transilvania Trophy and the other awards of the Official Competition, and 10 for the title of Best Film of the What's Up, Doc? Competition.
Of the 12 films in the Official Competition, ten are debuts. "Although the burning social themes are inevitable (class differences, inter-ethnic conflicts, migration, drug use, prostitution, etc.), the filmmakers achieve the increasingly rare performance in today’s cinema of not abusing them, constructing, with admirable economy of means, subversive stories of great impact and narrative sophistication, whose real stakes lie elsewhere, even when the body of the whole is black comedy." (Mihai Chirilov, TIFF Artistic Director).
This is the first time the Republic of Moldova enters the Transilvania IFF competition: Carbon (dir. Ion Borș), a clever farce about the troubled years of the Transnistrian conflict in the early 1990s. The film premiered last year at San Sebastian, but the project caught the attention of the Transilvania Pitch Stop jury, which awarded it back in 2019 when it was still in development. Spain is represented in the competition by two titles that couldn't be more different: Stillness in the Storm (d. Alberto Gastesi), a jazzy love story shot in black and white and suspended between past, present and fantasy; and Upon Entry (d. Alejandro Rojas and Juan Sebastián Vasquez), which turns a simple starting point (an interrogation at customs) into a harrowing dissection of couple dynamics worthy of the most claustrophobic of thrillers.
In an edition that pays homage in extenso to Nordic cinema with a dedicated Focus section, Finland and Denmark are in competition with Family Time (dir. Tia Kuovo) and The Cake Dinasty (dir. Christian Lollike), two family portraits, one more dysfunctional than the other, where comedy gradually turns either into smouldering tragedy, or into a burlesque and politically incorrect delirium from which no one escapes unscathed. Extreme family relationships are the driving force in three other films in competition: the Brazilian Charcoal (dir. Carolina Markowicz), a black comedy telling the story of a drug dealer who is forced to stay low for a while; the Iranian Like a Fish on the Moon (dir. Dornaz Hajiha), showing two parents faced with their son's sudden muteness; and the Croatian The Uncle (dir. David Kapac and Andrija Mardesic), a notable descendant of Funny Games, and at least just as uncomfortable.
The Canadian drama Noémie dit oui (dir. Geneviève Albert) talks about a different kind of family, that of girls in institutional care, among which the rebellious protagonist of this film, abandoned by her mother and falling prey to sex tourism. The mother-daughter bond is also explored, with tenderness and a touch of magical realism, in Daughter of Rage (dir. Laura Baumeister), set against the bewildering backdrop of Nicaragua's largest garbage dump. In response, Argentinian Andrew Sala's second film, The Barbarians, is a compact thriller about a young man who goes from bad to worse when he becomes the right-hand man of his father whom he doesn't really know. Adam Sedlák returns to TIFF with a second film (after Domestique) with this year's bombshell, Banger, a veritable Trainspotting for Generation Z, shot entirely with an iPhone 12 Pro Max.