Winners of TIFF 2020
The 9th edition of Transylvania International Film Festival- TIFF has designated its winners.
Eugen Coroianu, 10.08.2020, 14:00
‘Babyteeth: First Love’ is the debut movie of Australian director Shannon Murphy who is the big winner of this year’s edition of TIFF. She received the Transylvania Trophy worth 10 thousand Euros as well as the Audience Award. The movie tells the story of a teenager who has serious health problems and who falls in love with a trafficker. This first true love brings back the girl’s love of life and nothing else matters.
The Best Director Award went to the Belgian Tim Mielants for his movie ‘Patrick’ and to ex aequo Xinyuan Zheng Lu for the Chinese film ‘The Cloud in her Room’. The Best Performance Award went to Evgeniya Gromova for her role in the Russian film ‘Fidelity’. The Special Jury Award went to the Bulgarian independent film Sister by Svetla Tsotsorkova while the Excellence Award went to the Romanian actress Maria Ploae.
The FIPRESCI Award, granted by the International Federation of Film Critics to a film included in the Days of Romanian film section went to the documentary ‘Everything Will Not be Fine’ by Adrian Pîrvu and Helena Maksyom, a road-movie that follows the lives of several people as they were influenced by the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. Andrei Zincă’s ‘So, What’s Freedom’ received the Audience Award for the most popular film in the Romanian Days section.
In the same section the Award for Best Short Film went to the film ‘Kaimos’ by Sarra Tsorakidis and the Romanian Days Award for best Feature Film went to Acasa, My Home by Radu Ciorniciuc. The TIFF president, Tudor Giurgiu, has drawn attention that the entire independent culture, the entire independent sector needs support and has to be helped.
Attending the Awards Gala ceremony, the culture minister Bogdan Gheorghiu said he would hold talks with the artists’ representatives after August 15. He also talked about efforts to create the necessary framework for granting 4% of the Romanian Lottery’s profit to Romanian cinematography. In the context of the coronavius pandemic, the 140 films presented at the TIFF were screened in the open air. Viewers were subjected to epidemiological triage, had to wear masks and keep a distance of 1.5 meters from each other.
Set up in 2002 in Cluj Napoca, the Transylvania International Film Festival has been attended, during its 19th editions so far, by some of the most outstanding personalities of European cinematography such as Julie Delpy, Michael Radford, Annie Girardot, Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Cardinale, Wim Wenders, Jacqueline Bisset, Geraldine Chaplin, Sophia Loren, Alain Delon and Fanny Ardant. TIFF’s main targets remain: the promotion of cinematographic art by presenting the most challenging films of the moment, the support of young filmmakers and the constant involvement in developing the cinematographic industry. (L. Simion)