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Tag: European Film Festival

  • The European Film Festival

    The European Film Festival


    Bucharest film lovers have the opportunity to watch, until May 23, a selection of 33 films, of which 27 are national premieres, proposed by the organizers of the European Film Festival. The festival started on May 9, on the very Europe Day, in Timișoara, which is European Capital of Culture in 2023, and continued in Oraviţa, between May 12 and 14. In Bucharest, the event was opened, on Monday evening, at the Auditorium hall of the National Art Museum of Romania, with the film “The Pod Generation”, a co-production of Belgium, France, and Great Britain, directed by Sophie Barthes and award winner at the Sundance Festival. “It is a film that poses many questions about the boundaries between artificial and real, it makes us, perhaps, reconfigure the idea which we have ourselves about what is and is not natural, more than that, it touches on a theme that is perhaps the most sacrosanct of all or the most intangible in the public space – the conception of a child”, said the festivals artistic director, the film critic Cătălin Olaru.



    He also mentioned the partnership with the European Parliament Office in Romania: quote “Referring to our partnership with the European Parliament Office in Romania, I would like to mention the two films that we will screen at the EFF thanks to this collaboration. These are: Will-o-the-Wisp, directed by João Pedro Rodrigues, and Kurak Günler/Burning Days, directed by Emin Alper, selected in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the Cannes Film Festival last year. Will-o-the-Wisp, directed by João Pedro Rodrigues, could be labeled as scandalous after all. It is also a bet that we are making, as organizers, with our partners from the European Parliament Office in Romania, to bring to the festival, in addition to the rich offer that we have, not only warm, decent films, which do not disturb anyone, but also challenging films. And Will-o-the-Wisp is certainly one of them.” said film critic Cătălin Olaru.



    The European Film Festival is organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute, with the support of the European Commission Representation in Romania and EUNIC Romania, in partnership with the Union of Romanian Filmmakers, embassies, and European cultural institutes and centers. The theme of this edition is artificial intelligence. “This year, just like in 2022, we proposed a theme that is of interest and very intensely debated at the present moment, because European film also involves debate, besides diversity and balance”, said the president of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Liviu Jicman. He went on to say that European film involves themes or questions that we should ask ourselves, rather than try to give answers, we ask ourselves questions and it makes us think, said Liviu Jicman. From May 18, the festival will continue, for several days, in other localities of Romania such as Curtea de Argeş, Botoşani and Gura Humorului. (LS)

  • May 15, 2023

    May 15, 2023

    SUMMIT – The president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, will be
    attending the 4th Summit of the Council of Europe, held on Tuesday
    and Wednesday in Reykjavik and organized under the aegis of the Icelandic
    presidency of the Council of Europe. According to the Romanian Presidency, the
    summit will highlight the role the Council of Europe plays in the current
    geopolitical context marked by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The
    Council of Europe promotes and monitors the observance of democratic standards,
    human rights and the rule of law. It was one of the first international
    organizations that responded to the war in Ukraine by excluding the Russian
    Federation.


    EDUCATION LAWS
    – The draft education laws have today been submitted to the Senate’s special
    committees, which are expected to issue an opinion. Tomorrow the laws will be
    debated in the Education Committee. A final vote on the education laws is
    scheduled for May 22 in the Senate, the decision-making body in this case.
    According to Education Minister Ligia Deca, the laws seek to prevent and combat
    school dropout and functional illiteracy, to implement a pupil-oriented
    education, to ensure safety in schooling units and provide teachers with better
    training and support opportunities and observe professional ethics standards.
    Ruling coalition parties say the laws will reform the education system, but the
    opposition has voiced criticism, arguing the laws fail to provide solutions to
    the problems of the education system and represent a failure of the Educated
    Romania project endorsed by the presidency.




    WAR IN UKRAINE
    – France will train and equip a number of Ukrainian regiments with dozens of
    armored vehicles and light tanks, the presidents of France and Ukraine,
    Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday in Paris. France
    will also channel its efforts to bolster Ukraine’s anti-air defenses, the joint
    statement also reads. In diplomatic terms, the two presidents have argued in
    favor of introducing new sanctions against Russia and of continuing to
    strengthen ties between Ukraine, NATO and the EU. Ukraine has a right to make
    its own security choices and France supports this country’s bid to join the
    Euro-Atlantic Community, the French president pointed out. Volodymyr Zelenskyy
    visited Paris on Sunday evening as part of a mini tour of Europe which also
    included stopovers in Italy and Germany.




    AIRCRAFT -
    The MiG-21 LanceR aircraft of the Romanian Air Forces carried out their last
    flights on Monday in a ceremony held in several airbases across Romania. The 85
    Air Base in Bacău (east) is also now open to visitation. The withdrawal of
    MiG-21 LanceR jets was voted by the country’s Supreme Defense Council last year
    with a view to speeding up the purchase of F-16 jets.




    ELECTION IN TURKEY – The president of Turkey’s Electoral Council said that Conservative
    president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won over 49% of Sunday’s presidential vote
    with the majority of the ballot boxes counted. His opposition rival,
    Social-Democrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu,
    grabbed some 44% of the vote. Erdoğan said he is clearly leading in the
    elections, but remained open to the possibility of a runoff vote in case it is
    necessary, AFP reports. The opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, promised
    to win the second round of elections scheduled for May 28. For the first time
    in his 20-year mandate, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will have to rely on the
    presidential run-off to secure a new term in office.




    FESTIVAL -
    The European Film Festival starts today in Bucharest after the editions
    previously held in Timișoara and Oravița (west). Sophie Barthes’s The Pod
    Generation will open the festival, a winner at the Sundance Film festival this
    year. Running until May 23, the European Film Festival will include films
    premiered in Berlin, Venice, at Sundance or Locarno, many of which were
    released this year. (VP)



  • The European Film Festival

    The European Film Festival

    The European Film Festival (EFF) held in Romania has
    now reached its 21st edition. This year it included as many as 60
    productions of various types, more than 35 of which were screened as an absolute
    first in Romania. But the Festival did not include only the usual screening
    nights. It also offered debates designed to challenge the audience and to
    invite them to experiment with virtual reality. The 2017 edition of the EFF has
    on offer 64 documentaries, biographical films, dramas, comedies, animation
    movies, thriller and horror movies, short and medium-reel films, experimental
    films as well as Virtual Reality (VR) films. Of the total number, 42 were
    launched in 2017 and 2016. With details on that, here is the EFF coordinator
    Anca Hrab:




    Ever since its early days, the Festival brought
    together all kinds of productions. This is a catchphrase we have preserved,
    because it plays very well into the message of the festival, it is very
    suggestive. It is difficult to label films, we usually avoid doing this.
    Hollywood movies may be easier to label, but the European film is more
    difficult to fit into specific categories. This is why we opted for this
    formula which we found more suitable, namely ‘films of all kinds’.




    The EFF’s 21st edition was held in
    Bucharest May 4th through 11th, in Iasi, eastern Romania,
    May 12th through 14th, in Targu Mures, central Romania,
    May 19th to 21st, Gura Humorului, in northeastern
    Romania, May 19th to 21st, and in Timisoara, on May 26th
    to 28th. For the first time in its history, a gala screening of Aki
    Kaurismaki’s film, The Other Side of Hope (Finland, 2017), a premiere for
    Romania, opened in all 5 locations of the festival.




    LUX is one of the main sections of the EFF. It presents
    the three film productions that got through to the final in the most recent
    edition of the LUX Prize offered by the European Parliament. ‘Comics’ is a
    section which was specially created to celebrate the European Comics Salon.
    ‘Young Audiences’ includes films for children and teens, while ‘Film in the
    Republic of Moldova’ includes shorts and medium-reels made in the Republic of
    Moldova. Speaking about that, here is the EFF coordinator Anca Hrab once again:




    We should mention that this year, apart from the
    usual screening nights, we have expanded the range of events and took up a
    direction which brings debates on current issues into the limelight. This is
    why for this edition of the EFF we have selected productions likely to spark
    debates, to be starting points for a series of debates focusing on topics that
    are relevant for society. Many of those films were included in the Agora
    section. There were also films offered by the ARTE channel, a very important
    partner for this edition, then again, for two days running we screened
    documentaries at Romania’s National Art museum. We have also staged many
    discussions, one of those focused on human trafficking and was based on Adrian
    Sitaru’s The Fixer and Maria, a German film made in 2016. Another debate
    section was based on the film screened at the opening gala, ‘The Other Side of
    Hope’, by Aki Kaurismaki, and was organised jointly with a very bold festival,
    SUPER. It is a festival organised by teenagers, and its main themes this year
    are migration and acceptance through empathy.




    Two other panels staged as part of the EFF were
    Preparing Romania’s position in the reform of the European audio-visual
    policy and #RebuildingEurope in Sarajevo an event organised together with
    the National School of Political and Administrative Studies, a debate based on
    The Siege, a film produced in 2016.




    Paul Negoescu is the director of Two Lottery Tickets,
    a 2016 production inspired from a short story by the outstanding Romanian
    playwright Caragiale. Negoescu is this year’s ambassador of the European Film
    Festival, EFF. For me, cinema is a universal language and I’m reluctant to splitting it geographically, ethnically or
    nationally. I equally appreciate European, American, Iranian or Japanese films.
    However, the European film has a special meaning for me, as I relate with its
    values, Paul Negoescu says. Paul directed the promotion clip for the
    present edition of the EFF, starting off from his own idea which illustrates
    his love of the European film. Fully in line with the new trend of the
    Festival, the clip hints at the ability of film to stir not only emotion, but
    also to create dialogue, a category the European film brilliantly illustrates.
    With details on that, here is Paul Negoescu himself:




    When I was a student and even before being admitted
    to University, the European Film Festival was one of the few opportunities to
    watch European productions in Bucharest. Back then there were not so many
    opportunities to watch this kind of movies, there were not so many festivals
    either. We used to have Dakino, the French Film Festival, the British Film
    festival and the European Film Festival. The main idea of the clip I created
    for the Festival came to me during this winter’s protests, particularly since
    during the same period protest rallies were being held in other countries as
    well. And I thought I could build on this idea of protests which generate
    discussions and debates. I mean, with everybody involved in some protest, why
    wouldn’t film lovers, those who want better films, protest as well?




    In European
    cinema, the author’s vision is above the financial investors’ interests, and
    when the author has full creative freedom, authentic, unconventional and daring
    films can arise. Moreover, in times that seem to get more and more divisive, cinema
    upholds as a social hard core able to bring us together, and the European film
    makes no exception, filmmaker Paul Negoescu says.




    The European Film Festival is organised by the
    Romanian Cultural Institute, under the aegis of EUNIC Romania, in a partnership
    with the European Commission Representation, and with the support of European
    embassies and cultural centres, of the National Art Museum, the National
    Peasant Museum, the Peasant Museum Cinema, the French Institute, the Elvire
    Popesco Cinema. Also supporting the European Film Festival were the Czech
    Centre, the Cervantes Institute, the Filmmakers Union in Romania and the
    European Parliament Information Office in Romania.



  • May 5, 2016

    May 5, 2016

    May 6th will be seeing the beginning of an election campaign for the local election on June 5th in Romania. This campaign is due to end on June 4th. Several well-known political parties, such as the Social Democratic Party, the National-Liberal Party, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, the Alliance of the Liberals and Democrats in Romania, the National Union for the Progress of Romania and the People’s Movement Party as well as a few newly founded political groups are vying for seats in the upcoming election. Under the 2015 legislation, a party must have at least 3 members to be registered. This has been for the third time since the fall of communism in Romania when a technocratic government is staging elections, after the ones headed by Theodor Stolojan over 1991-1992 and Mugur Isarescu over 1999-2000.



    Several events devoted to Romania’s Royal House, which is celebrating 150 years on May 10th, are to be staged in Bucharest and Sinaia, a mountain resort in southern Romania, until next Tuesday. A school entitled “Queen-mother Elena” is to be inaugurated in Bucharest today, while a cinema in Bucharest will be screening a documentary entitled, ‘King Mihai’s War in His own Words’. On Friday, the Coral Temple in Bucharest is to be hosting a ceremony staged by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. Radio Romania will tomorrow be playing venue for two events: the launch of a volume entitled ‘The Royal Year’ and a Royal Concert. Princess Margareta and Prince Radu together with other members of the Royal Family will on Monday attend a session in the Aula Magna of the Romanian Academy while on the next day the resort of Sinaia, in southern Romania, will be seeing a royal standard ceremony for the first time since 1947. Health issues have prevented Romania’s king, Mihai 1st from attending the ceremonies, but he will be represented by his daughter Princess Margareta.



    The 20th edition of the European Film Festival has today started in Bucharest and other five Romanian cities. The event has been staged by the Romanian Cultural Institute in partnership with the European Commission’s Representation in Romania with support from the Filmmakers Union in Romania the National Film Archive, Elvire Popesco Cinema and the embassies and cultural centres of the European countries under the EUNIC aegis in Bucharest. The present edition of this festival will see the screening of 85 films from almost all European countries. Over May 5th and 15th the Romanian Cultural will be hosting an exhibition of artist Silviu Ghetie, showcasing photos taken during the making of Romanian film productions.



    Four Romanians have qualified for the quarterfinals of the tennis tournament in Madrid with 4.8 million dollars in prize money. Two of these players, Simona Halep and Irina Begu will by vying for a place in the semi-finals. Patricia Tig, from the Romanian delegation, last night managed a sensational win against 25th-seeded Madison Keys of the USA. In the quarters Tig will be playing Australian Samantha Stosur, while Sorana Carstea will be up against Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia.