Does the team of APFR ever sleep in summer? I've been asking myself this question for years. APFR is short for 'Asociația pentru promovarea filmului românesc', the Romanian Film Promotion, the organisation behind Romania's biggest annual film festival, Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Cluj.

Together with the TIFF team, APFR manages from June to September not only TIFF Cluj, TIFF Sibiu, TIFF Bucharest, TIFF Târgu Mureș, Alba Film Fest, but also the horror film festival Full Moon, which ended ten days ago.

Their current project is the 5h edition of TIFF Caravan-Operation Kino/Caravana filmelor TIFF-Operation Kino. The idea is to tour Romanian cities without or with few cinemas and present films from the most recent edition of the TIFF event in Cluj. And the best thing is: the screenings are open air and free. Operation Kino started in June and will continue until  September 7. 

The selection is eclectic, including the big winner of this year's festival, a Spanish romantic drama with quite the twist, Stockholm (trailer below). Personally I wasn't that impressed with the film but it's still a catchy, clever movie. My must-see recommendation would be the Spanish-Romanian co-production Caníbal/Cannibal, a beautiful love story featuring a –well – cannibal, but I can assure it this movie is unlike anything you might expect. I also enjoyed the Kurdish folk story Were Dengê min /Come to My Voice and the soccer family comedy La gran familia española/Family United.

Romanian cinema is just as solidly represented, and in case you haven't yet watched Câinele japonez/The Japanese Dog, București, und ești?/Where Are You Bucharest? and Love Building, here's your chance to catch up on some of last year's most interesting films.

You can find the detailed programme here, also, curiously, only in Romanian. And here is the schedule for the following weeks and cities:

Iași: 5-6 August

Timișoara: 11-13 August

Oradea: 15-17 August

Alexandria: 19-21 August

Târgoviște: 5-7 September

As for the exact locations and programme of the individual events, the details are released only a few days before the respective tour on their Facebook page. It would have been great to have the line-up for all cities and it's really puzzling why that hasn't happened but on the other hand it's summer, it's open air, and things should be spontaneous and surprising.

By Ioana Moldovan, columnist, ioana.moldovan@romania-insider.com 

(photo source: Caravana TIFF on Facebook)