What a fun way to end this festival summer! The infectiously enthusiastic Filmul de Piatra will take place earlier this year, between August 30^th and September 1^st, in and around Piatra Neamț, and you should not miss this one.

The fest shows short films from Romania and Moldova, being the only one in the country to work exclusively with this combination. It has both competitive and a non-competitive sections as well as a very entertaining list of special events, mostly concerts featuring Romanian alternative bands. This year's program is (surprisingly) not online yet, and this almost made me drop the idea of writing about it.

However, my admiration for the initiative got the best of me and to be fair, I'm sure the line-up will not disappoint. The wonderful Ada Milea has just been announced to perform on Friday, so the evenings are already looking great. Among others, the festival has found devoted friends in Anim'est, NexT, and ShortsUP, and I expect they will be screening some of the features shown by these events.

Like most Romanian cultural projects, this one is also painfully underfunded (to be more precise, it has received no state money whatsoever) and it is only due to its dedicated team, made out solely of volunteers, that Filmul de Piatra can actually exist. Fortunately, the financial drama has only made the organizers more creative, making them start a collaboration with the NGO Tășuleasa Social, centering on civic education, and add a second location, the beautiful village of Piatra Fântânele.

And again, I cannot stress often enough how happy I am about exciting things happening outside of Bucharest; this country needs a serious dose of good initiatives outside its bustling capital. Sure, there are cities which have developed their brands, like Cluj or Sibiu, with cinema and theater, respectively, and some few more catching up quickly, Iași being a particularly good example of the latter.

But these are cities with a generally good infrastructure and venues allowing for events to take place there. And, of course, people who will struggle to make them happen. There are plenty more cities around though which apparently lack both resources and ideas for this and whenever one does make it, I am bursting with joy. So good for you, lovely people of Piatra Neamț. Way to go.

The festival's website is pretty but not particularly useful; you'd have to keep up with their Facebook page to get all the news. It's really worth it though, if not for the films that you might have seen already at other festivals, than at least for the sheer enthusiasm of the project.

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