Twenty-two films and documentaries from around the world directed by first- and second-time directors will compete for the top prizes during the 25th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival, taking place in Cluj-Napoca from June 12 to 21, 2026.<\/p>\n
Twelve films will vie for the coveted Transilvania Trophy and other accolades in the Official Competition, while ten works will compete for the top prize in the What’s Up, Doc? Section.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year\u2019s lineup is a mix as polarising as the world it comes from. Stark black-and-white minimalism and an overdose of blood and psychedelic colour. True stories and the wildest fabrications. Genre films flirted with, or genre films thrown into an orgiastic blender,\u201d said TIFF artistic director Mihai Chirilov.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Official Competition Films:<\/strong><\/p>\n Feels Like Home<\/em><\/strong> (dir. G\u00e1bor Holtai, Hungary) – a claustrophobic debut in which family functions as the amniotic fluid required to force a human being into existence; Now in its fifth year as a dedicated competition within Transilvania IFF<\/strong>, the What\u2019s Up, Doc?<\/strong> section brings together ten titles. Alongside straight-format films, this year\u2019s selection takes in a coyote animation, a poetic hybrid, a model of investigative journalism, and a tongue-in-cheek B-movie series.<\/p>\n \u201cFor all their geographic range \u2014 from America to Morocco, Mexico to South Africa, the former Soviet Union to present-day Israel \u2014 the films in competition (eight of them debuts) keep returning to the same ground: love, the need for closeness, and above all, Truth. The place where differences dissolve and only human experience remains, in all its ambiguity,\u201d said section curator Cr\u0103i\u021ba Nanu.<\/p>\n The What\u2019s Up Doc? films:<\/strong><\/p>\n We Were Left Alone <\/em><\/strong>(dir. Adri\u00e1n Canoura, Spain) – a son\u2019s letter to his sailor father \u2014 formally unusual, repetitive by design, part experimental film and part immersive installation: love rendered through absence, forgiveness rendered through form; The Transilvania International Film Festival is organized by the Romanian Film Promotion Association and the Transilvania Film Festival Association.<\/p>\n TIFF organizers will grant the first Janovics Jen\u0151 Award during this year\u2019s edition of the event. Created in memory of a pioneer of Transylvanian and European cinema, the Janovics Jen\u0151 Award recognises an individual who has shaped the film world through vision, a pioneering spirit, and the ability to open new roads in the industry.<\/p>\n The award will go to Polish film distributor, festival founder, producer, and champion of art cinema Roman Gutek. He created the first film ecosystem in the region, trained professionals, worked with influential directors like Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda, connected local production to international networks, and demonstrated that cinema could become a genuine cultural industry in Romania.<\/p>\n \u201cHe put Cluj on the map of European cinema before most European cities were thinking that way,\u201d the organizers said in a press release.<\/p>\n
\nMy Father’s Shadow<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Akinola Davies jr, UK) \u2013 the film operates as a dream-memory of a political turning point and how it echoes through one family across generations;
\nButterfly<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Itonje S\u00f8imer Guttormsen, Norway) \u2013 the story tracks two sisters working through the long shadow of a guru mother, with self-knowledge serving as the film\u2019s uneasy currency;
\nSicko<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Aitore Zholdaskali, Kazakhstan) – a cynical, hard-boiled debut from the Kazakh director,\u00a0 already a box-office hit in his home country;
\nLe Roi Soleil (No One Will Know)<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Vincent Ma\u00ebl Cardona, France) – a slick, high-concept collision of heist movie and slasher, centred on a winning lottery ticket and driven by the kind of greed that can only end badly;
\nLionel <\/em><\/strong>(dir. Carlos Saiz, Spain) – an experiment on both sides of the lens: a road movie built around a script the cast never saw, yet one that arrives at a universal truth about fathers and sons;
\nThe Night is Fading Away<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Ezequiel Salinas, Ramiro Sonzini, Argentina) – a bittersweet love letter to cinema, in which a displaced projectionist takes a job as a night watchman at a cinema and gradually builds an unlikely community around old films;
\nA Useful Ghost<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, France) – anarchic and oddly tender, the film uses absurdism to ask serious questions about love and the wrongs we leave unaddressed;
\nTruly Naked<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Muriel d\u2019Ansembourg, Netherlands) \u2013 the film makes nudity and sex matter-of-fact, then pivots to the harder question: whether shedding your clothes is the same as opening yourself up;
\nOur Father<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Goran Stankovic, Serbia) \u2013 the film examines the cult of a surrogate patriarch at a Serbian monastery for recovering addicts, and the difficulty of dismantling something that can\u2019t be entirely condemned;
\nThe Red Hangar<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Juan Pablo Sallato, Chile) – a lean, pressure-cooker thriller about honour and duty during the Pinochet coup, remarkable for how much it achieves with limited means;
\nTitanic Ocean<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Konstantina Kotzamani, Greece) \u2013 the film follows young women training to become professional mermaids in a world that never stops demanding reinvention.<\/p>\n
\nGoodbye Sisters<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Alexander Murphy, France) – a film that manages to be both painterly and clear-eyed about family and fate;
\nMemory<\/strong> (dir. Vladlena Sandu, France) – a quietly astonishing walk through one child\u2019s experience of the Soviet collapse and a family stretched between Chechnya and Crimea;
\nVariations on a Theme<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Jason Jacobs, Devon Delmar, South Africa) – a hybrid part poem, part excavation, set in South Africa, tracing how betrayal, buried under years of silence, continues to travel across generations;
\nBouchra<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Orian Yani Barki, Meriem Bennani, USA) – a coming-out story told with disarming honesty and transformed into a distinctive animated film;
\nMotel Paraiso<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Jose Eduardo Castilla Ponce, Mexico) – takes an equally playful approach, casting a pair of eccentric grandparents as the unwitting stars of their own B-movie franchise, with warmth and genuine comic invention;
\nFar From Maine<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Roy Cohen, France) – one of the most rigorous and genuinely open-handed arguments for peace in recent documentary cinema;
\nThe Seoul Guardians<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Kim Jong-Woo, Kim Shin-Wan, Cho Chul-Young, South Korea) – a live-action reminder that democratic power is never more than one crowd\u2019s determination;
\nOf Mud And Blood<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Jean-Gabriel Leynaud, France) \u2013 a story of exploitation set in the Congo, with a Steinbeckian eye for the smallness of dreams against the large scale of abuse;
\nHex<\/em><\/strong> (dir. Maja Holand, Norway) – the true story of three friends who vow to become famous as witches and a heavy metal band;<\/p>\n