European cinema will have a strong presence at the 25th Transilvania International Film Festival, which will take place from June 12 to 21, 2026, in the city of Cluj-Napoca. The anniversary edition confirms TIFF’s role as one of the key regional platforms for discovering new voices, supporting local production and connecting Romanian audiences with some of the most active directions in contemporary European filmmaking.
The European profile of the programme is visible across several sections of the festival. In the Official Competition, where first and second-time directors compete for the Transilvania Trophy, TIFF brings together films from a wide range of territories, including Hungary, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Norway, the UK and Serbia. Among the most notable European titles is Konstantina Kotzamani’s Titanic Ocean, a major Greek-led international co-production with Romania among its production partners, which arrived at TIFF after its Cannes 2026 Official Selection premiere. The line-up also includes Andreea Borțun’s rural drama A River’s Gaze, a Romania–France–Slovenia production executive produced by the Hollywood star Sebastian Stan, further strengthening the festival’s link between Romanian cinema and the international industry. Other titles such as Feels Like Home by Gábor Holtai, Le Roi Soleil / No One Will Know by Vincent Maël Cardona, Lionel by Carlos Saiz, Truly Naked by Muriel d’Ansembourg, Butterfly by Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr. and Our Father by Goran Stanković point to a selection that combines emerging talent, festival circulation and strong authorial perspectives.
Emerging European Voices at the Centre of TIFF.25
One of the clearest signs of TIFF’s European positioning is the return of the SMART7 Competition, a programme dedicated to emerging voices in European cinema. Designed as a platform for early-career auteurs, SMART7 connects seven European festivals and gives selected films the possibility to circulate across different audiences and industry contexts.
The 2026 SMART7 selection includes A River’s Gaze by Andreea Borțun from Romania, No Ghosts on Good Street by Emi Buchwald from Poland, Patty Is Such a Girly Name by Giorgos Georgopoulos from Greece, The Visitor by Vytautas Katkus from Lithuania, The Fires by Ugla Hauksdóttir from Iceland, Eternal Flame by Pedro Ramalhete from Portugal and The Dashed Lines by Anxos Fazáns from Spain.
For TIFF, this section reinforces the festival’s function as more than a showcase. It places Cluj-Napoca inside a wider European circulation network, where films are not presented only as isolated titles, but as part of a larger conversation about new cinematic languages, regional identities and young directors entering the international market.
Romanian Days Strengthens the Local Industry Dimension
The European presence at TIFF.25 also starts from the local industry. Romanian Days will bring 31 local productions to the festival, including 11 feature films and 20 short films. Most of the selected features are fiction debuts, confirming the section’s importance as a space for new Romanian filmmakers and as an industry-facing platform for local production.
Among the Romanian titles highlighted by the festival are A River’s Gaze by Andreea Borțun, The Circle by Valeriu Andriuță, Something Familiar by Rachel Taparjan, Back and Forth by Cristian Bota, Lenin’s Pawn by Dragoș Turea and Y by Maria Popistașu and Alex Baciu.
The section also has a professional dimension. The selected feature films will be considered by the FIPRESCI jury, while the shorts are eligible for recognition from the Signis jury. In this way, Romanian Days functions both as a national showcase and as an international visibility tool for filmmakers working in one of Europe’s most closely watched regional cinemas.
Focus Netherlands and European Auteur Cinema
TIFF.25 will also dedicate a national focus to the Netherlands, with a programme curated by Evgeny Gusyatinskiy from the International Film Festival Rotterdam programming team. Focus Netherlands combines recent Dutch films presented at major European festivals with cult classics that have influenced generations of filmmakers.
The selection includes recent titles such as Whitetail, Reedland, De Idylle, Fabula, A Messy Tribute to Motherly Love and I Shall See, alongside classics including The Vanishing and Spetters. The programme adds another layer to the European structure of the anniversary edition, moving between contemporary production, cinema history and the relationship between national film cultures and international festival audiences.
Beyond the national focus, TIFF’s first announced titles also point to a strong European presence, with films by major auteurs and established names. The programme includes Radu Jude’s Diary of a Chambermaid, a France–Romania production selected for Quinzaine des Cinéastes, and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas from Spain. Other European titles announced by TIFF include Maspalomas from Spain, Murder in the Building from France, The Last Viking from Denmark, The Things Left Unspoken from Italy–Morocco and Mother from North Macedonia–Belgium.
The 25th edition of Transilvania International Film Festival therefore builds its European presence on several levels: competition titles, documentary cinema, emerging auteurs, Romanian production, national focus programming and films by established European directors. For the industry, this makes TIFF.25 not only an anniversary edition, but also a clear snapshot of how European cinema continues to circulate through regional festivals that combine audience engagement, discovery and professional visibility.
