Over the last few years, things have changed significantly in terms of industry opportunities at the Transilvania International Film Festival, which opens today in Cluj, Romania. The 14th edition will offer a program for emerging filmmakers, workshops, a pitching session and a think-tank platform, among others, aiming to help local filmmakers and to improve communication in terms of co-production in the area. 

Three are the main programmes carrying out this task:

Transilvania Talent Lab (May 31 – June 5), a hands-on educational program for emerging filmmakers, has already reached its fourth edition, selecting eight producers, directors and/or screenwriters from Romania and Moldova to work on their fiction and documentary projects with professionals such as Martina Bleis from the Berlinale Co-Production Market and Sirkka Möller from Dok Leipzig. 

Transilvania Pitch Stop (June 1-6, second edition), a development workshop that wraps up with a pitching session, will help develop five fiction projects: Horses at the King (Raluca Maria Rusu), The Wind-Seeker (Mihai Sofronea), Charlton Heston (Andrei Creţulescu), The Soldiers (Ivana Mladenovic) and 1985 (Bogdan Mureşanu). TPS is organized in partnership with Locarno Industry Days and Connecting Cottbus. This year΄s tutors are: Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Heretic - Producer, and Christian Routh, ScriptEast - Head of Studies. The 5 selected projects will be tutored by the two and will go through a preparatory workshop. Two projects will be awarded and will travel to Locarno for a matchmaking session. The two awards also include €2000 in cash offered by Transilvania IFF and a participation in the Connecting Cottbus East-West Co-Production Market line-up. This year΄s TPS jury members are: Roberto Olla (Executive Director, Eurimages), Matthieu Darras (Head of Programmes, Torino Film Lab) and Elin Erichsen (Head of Development, Norwegian Film Institute).

#FEEDback (Film Eastern Europe Dialogue) is a think-tank platform developed in partnership with Connecting Cottbus and When East Meets West co-production markets with support from EAVE – European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs. Its purpose is to enhance cross-border relations and to improve communication between small territories. Several representatives from national funding bodies, supranational institutions and producers will discuss innovative ways to use the public funding and possibilities on cooperation. To further enhance interest and strengthen the visibility of East-West cooperation, the results of this platform will be presented at the European Film Market at the 2016 Berlinale.

Masterclasses open to the participants and to the general public will also take place during the festival. On June 4, a Handling Ideas workshop with Paul Tyler is programmed. Paul Tyler has driven innovation through over 370 projects for more than 65 companies across 15 countries and his method gives team members a common language of their project’s goal. Also on June 4, script consultant, scriptwriter, producer and visiting lecturer at the National Film and Television School (UK) Clare Downs tackles scriptwriting in Writers’ Hour. New media marketing will be in focus thanks to documentary film producer and director Jon Reiss and his master class Connect with Audiences in the New Digital Landscape, presented by American Film Showcase and moderated by Gosia Kucharska. 

Romanian director Mircea Daneliuc, one of the most important Romanian artists and author of subversive films comes next, in a masterclass moderated by Festival President Tudor Giurgiu. The event will be part of a retrospective dedicated to the auteur at this edition of Transilvania IFF. Actress Nastassja Kinski will be in a dialogue with Variety critic Jay Weissberg, talking about her experience with directors such as Wim Wenders, Roman Polanski or Francis Ford Coppola. Kinski will receive a Special Award for the Contribution to the World Cinema.

"Our intention is to keep it concentrated and to focus our energy and resources on further developing it as the industry one stop shop for talent from Romania and Moldova during Transilvania IFF. The new initiative related to policy-making and regional cooperation is a natural step that we have considered necessary to make in the current digital and European film landscape," said Alex Trăilă, Transilvania IFF΄s Head of Industry.