This year's edition of Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) will include retrospectives dedicated to French New Wave founder Jean-Luc Godard and American director Sidney Lumet.

The film festival, which takes place between June 9th and June 18th in Cluj-Napoca, will screen eight films by Godard (opening photo), who passed away last year.

As part of the retrospective on the work of the filmmaker, TIFF will screen Godard's 1960 debut À bout de souffle (Breathless), the iconic film of French Nouvelle Vague that won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Jean Vigo Prize, an important recognition in French cinema. It will also show the 1963 Le Mépris (Contempt); Pierrot le fou (1965), the film that brought together Anna Karina, the director's muse and a representative figure of the French New Wave, and Jean-Paul Belmondo; Alphaville, the winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival in 1965; La chinoise (1967), loosely adapted from Dostoevsky's Demons and a winner of the Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival; Weekend (1967); the Palme d'Or nominated 1980 Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Every Man for Himself); and the 1987 Soigne ta droite!, starring Godard himself as a director who is guaranteed funding for his films as long as he manages to finish it in 24 hours.

Close-up Jean-Luc Godard is organized with the support of the French Institute of Romania.

At the same time, the festival dedicates a retrospective to the cinematic universe of one of the most prolific American directors of the modern period, Sidney Lumet (1924 - 2011). Close-up Sidney Lumet will bring six restored works of the filmmaker to Cluj-Napoca audiences. The program is inspired by the retrospective dedicated to the director by Lumière Film Festival (Lyon, France) in 2022, a cinephile event that celebrates classic cinema by presenting restored versions of masterpieces and tributes to legendary directors.

The films to be screened include Lumet's 1957 12 Angry Men. His first feature, a suspenseful courtroom drama about a jury that must decide whether to convict or acquit a teenager accused of murder, won the Golden Bear at Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated for three Oscars. TIFF will also screen Fail Safe (1964), a screen adaptation of the novel of the same title by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler starring Henry Fonda and Walther Matthau; Serpico (1973), the neo-noir biographical drama about an honest New York City cop played by Al Pacino; Dog Day Afternoon (1975), which received one Academy Award and six other nominations, seven Golden Globe nominations and the Best Actor Prize at San Sebastián Film Festival; the 1976 satire of the media world Network (1976); and the 1988 Running on Empty, the story of a family trying to stay together, even though the parents are fugitives, wanted by authorities for their anti-Vietnam War activity.

Passes for this year's edition of TIFF are on sale at Eventbook.ro.

(Photos courtesy of TIFF)

simona@romania-insider.com