Transilvania International Film Festival Archives

That Was Life, David Martín de los Santos

‘That Was Life’ Is A Continually Surprising Delight About Later-Life Awakening [Transilvania Review]

July 31, 2021 3:33 pm

Brush past the terrible English title (also sometimes written as "That Was Life" which is marginally more comprehensible but still needlessly generic) and David Martín de los Santos' debut feature, titled in S...

Slight But Spirited LGBT Romance ‘Several Conversations About A Very Tall Girl’ [Transilvania Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 23, 2018 9:00 am

Festivals, News, Reviews

You could be forgiven for grimacing at the very notion of "Romanian Mumblecore." And if Bogdan Theodor Olteanu's debut feature were a mixture of the least appealing associations of both terms -- some sort of un...

A Dubious Accusation Catches Fire In Intelligent, Ambivalent, Uncomfortably Topical ‘Liquid Truth’ [Transilvania Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 17, 2018 9:23 am

Festivals, Reviews

In a well-worn municipal swimming pool in Brazil, the handsome, popular 33-year-old instructor Rubens (a superb Daniel de Oliveira) takes one of his best pupils, Alex (Luiz Felipe Mello), aside to check in with...

Quiet, Powerful, Award-Winning Slow Burn ‘The Heiresses’ [Transilvania Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 10, 2018 9:33 am

Festivals, Reviews

The visiting women -- and it is always women -- appraise the neatly laid out ornaments, cutlery and linens in a large colonial drawing room with impatient disinterest. They're like already sated carrion birds i...

Lauren Greenfield’s ‘Generation Wealth’ Is An Enjoyable But Unfocused Portrait Of Excess [Transilvania Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 8, 2018 5:20 pm

Festivals, News, Reviews

The first surprise of photographer Lauren Greenfield's Sundance doc, which played at the Transilvania International Film Festival prior to its theatrical release in the U.S. in July, is that the family portraye...

Flawed But Fearless Berlin Golden Bear Winner ‘Touch Me Not’ [Transilvania Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 3, 2018 3:44 pm

Festivals, Reviews

We are not used to the kind of directness that Adina Pintilie's debut, "Touch Me Not," deals in, and it fires its opening salvo early. After a short prologue, the film begins with a lingering macro shot driftin...

‘God’s Own Country’ Director Francis Lee On ‘Pretty Woman,’ Brexit And This ‘Super Exciting’ Era Of Queer Cinema

Jessica Kiang

June 23, 2017 10:19 am

Festivals, Interviews

It had been hot and bright all the days prior, with the sun blazing down from the clear blue skies over Cluj, during my visit to the Transilvania Film Festival in Romania. But the day of my interview with Franc...

Icelandic Debut ‘Heartstone’ Is A Beautiful, Heartsore Account Of Childhood’s End [Transilvania Fest Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 7, 2017 4:42 pm

Festivals, News, Reviews

1

Innocence doesn't just end, it is dashed on the jagged rocks of experience at the end of a torpid Icelandic summer in Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson's beautifully observed, though overlong coming-of-age tale. Less...

In Space, No One Can Hear You Whine: Tragicomic Doc ‘Amateurs In Space’ [Transilvania Fest Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 6, 2017 4:44 pm

Festivals, News, Reviews

Two Danish guys shoot for the stars, by attempting to home-build a craft capable of space travel, on a partially crowdfunded budget six orders of magnitude smaller than NASA's, in Max Kestner's engaging doc, "A...

Enjoyably Overstuffed Czech/Slovak Crime Noir ‘The Red Captain’ [Transilvania Fest Review]

Jessica Kiang

June 5, 2017 5:11 pm

Festivals, News, Reviews

1

Lying somewhere on the spectrum between the recent boom in so-called Scandi-noir and Tom Robb Smith's spy novel "Child 44" (which was also adapted into a film), Michal Kollár's gritty, occasionally gruesome "Th...

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