First films announced for Transilvania International Film Festival 2024
Movies featuring Mads Mikkelsen, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Paul Mescal are among the first titles announced for Romania's Transilvania International Film Festival - TIFF.23, which will take place in Cluj-Napoca between June 14-24.
The TIFF.23 selection will offer spectators the opportunity to watch, for the first time, some of the year's most anticipated productions. Also added to the lineup are films awarded at the Berlin and Venice film festivals.
Danish superstar Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round, The Hunt, Hannibal) returns to the big screen in The Promised Land (dir. Nikolaj Arcel, Denmark, 2023), a historical drama inspired by real events, which premiered in Venice. Mikkelsen plays a former soldier turned farmer in one of Denmark's most challenging agricultural regions. The Promised Land earned Mikkelsen the Best Actor award at the European Film Awards and was Denmark's entry for the 2024 Oscars.
Featuring the most acclaimed British actors of the moment, All of Us Strangers (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2023) was a public favorite and a darling of award ceremonies last season. Andrew Scott (Fleabag) plays a screenwriter in contemporary London, living isolated, still haunted by the death of his parents in childhood. When he meets a neighbor, played by Paul Mescal (Aftersun, Normal People), he decides to let him into his life and try a new path to healing. The cast is completed by Claire Foy (The Crown) and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot).
Winner of the Silver Bear at Berlinale 2024 for Best Screenplay, Dying (dir. Matthias Glasner, Germany, 2024) is a dramedy about the end of life, reflected in several characters, members of the same family. The film's cast is led by Lars Eidinger, known to audiences from Persian Lessons, series like Babylon Berlin and All the Light We Cannot See, as well as theater performances directed by Thomas Ostermeier, in which he played Hamlet or Richard III.
Also from the Berlin Festival selection comes the psychological drama Sons (dir. Gustav Moller, Denmark, 2023). A female prison guard faces a dilemma when an inmate she knows is transferred to the prison where she works. To be closer to him, the woman decides to move to the section where he is imprisoned, the most dangerous in the institution.
Director Gustav Moller is known to the Cluj-Napoca audience: his debut film, The Guilty, was selected in the TIFF 2018 Competition, where it won the Audience Award, and the series he directed, The Dark Heart, was presented in 2022 in the Coming Up Next section.
Moromeţii 3 concludes the story of the most famous peasant family in Romanian literature. Directed by Romanian Stere Gulea, who also directed the first two parts of the Moromeţii trilogy (1987, 2018), this new film follows the writing career of Niculae, the youngest son of Moromete, caught in the whirlwind of ideological changes in the '50s. Horaţiu Mălăele returns in the iconic role of father Ilie Moromete, while Niculae is played by Alex Călin. The cast also includes Mara Bugarin, Olimpia Melinte, Iulian Postelnicu, and Oana Pellea. The film will premiere at TIFF.23.
French filmmaker Ladj Li presents Les Indesirables (France, 2023), a new social drama set in the Parisian suburbs. Following two characters - an activist and a young mayor - Les Indesirables raises some of the most divergent and significant social issues of the present in a powerful production.
La Cocina, directed by one of Mexico's most original young filmmakers, Alonso Ruizpalacios, takes its viewers into the kitchen of a New York restaurant, where a couple tries to keep their relationship intact and survive highly stressful jobs. Filmed in black and white with some surprising color inserts, La Cocina is an adaptation of the play The Kitchen, written by Arnold Wesker in 1957. Selected for Berlin, the film's cast includes Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Carol) and the Mexican Raúl Briones.
(Photo source: TIFF)
