The 30th edition of the European Film Festival, the event showcasing the diversity of European cinema, runs this year a program of more than 50 films questioning the limits of cinema and the freedoms allowed to filmmakers.

“Limits come in many forms, and only some of them are helpful to us. In the best-case scenario, limits stimulate creativity. But how does that square with the fact that we always hear that creativity knows no bounds? Where do the freedoms a filmmaker can allow themselves begin and end? From the inherently political relationship with the world in front of the screen, to the length of a shot, the sharpness of a line, or the gaze cast perpendicularly across the shapes of a body—everything can be censored in one way or another. If it has limits, then more often than not, cinema ceases to be cinema at all. Hybrid films that no one has timed with a stopwatch, comedies woven solely through editing, scripts without acts, dramas without culprits, epics without heroes. After 30 years, the film as we see it at the festival and the world it reflects have something in common: both are boundless,” Cătălin Olaru, the artistic director of this year’s edition, explained.

The program includes titles such as Arto Halonen’s After Us the Flood, Anja Salomonowitz’s Sleeping with the Tiger, and Vicente Alves do Ó’s The Portuguese. The program is listed here.

The event opens on April 16 in Botoșani, followed by the local edition in Iași, opening on April 17. The festival will hold screenings in the country until June 1 as follows: in Brăila between April 24 and April 26, in Bucharest between May 6 and May 17, in Brașov between May 8 and May 10, in Curtea de Argeș between May 8 and May 9, in Timișoara between May 8 and May 10, in Arad and Târgu Mureș between May 15 and May 17, in Bistrița between May 22 and May 24, in Chitila between May 29 and May 30, in Târgu Jiu between May 29 and May 31, and in Tulcea between May 30 and June 1.

In Bucharest, the event’s opening gala will take place at the National Museum of Art of Romania, and screenings will be held at Elvire Popesco Cinema, Apollo111 Cinema, Union, and Grădina cu Filme.

The festival is organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute, with the support of the Representation of the European Commission in Romania and EUNIC Romania, in partnership with the Union of Filmmakers of Romania, as well as European embassies, cultural centers, and institutes.

(Illustration: the organizers)

simona@romania-insider.com