Romania’s Anonimul festival awards director Sergei Loznitsa

Anonimul, an independent film festival held in Sfântu Gheorghe, in the Danube Delta, has awarded Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa for his contribution to the beauty of universal cinema, the organizers of the event announced.

The festival held a retrospective dedicated to the director and screened seven of his films. Among them were My Joy, In the Fog, A Gentle Creature, Donbass, Maidan, Austerlitz and The Trial. Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov, recently cast in Corneliu Porumboiu’s Cannes-selected feature The Whistlers/ La Gomera, stars in two of them, namely My Joy and In the Fog.

At the same time, the public of the festival decided to award the 2019 Anonimul Trophy and a EUR 3,000 prize to the Belgian production The Best of Dorien, directed by Anke Blondé. The public’s choice award for the Best Romanian Short, amounting to EUR 1,000, went to Răzvan Oprescu’s Trofeul Tinereții (The Trophy of Youth). The public’s choice award for the Best Foreign Short, also worth EUR 1,000, went to the Spanish production Piggy, directed by Carlota Pereda. The short La Bête, directed by Filippo Meneghetti, received the EUR 1,000 Ovidiu Bose Paștină Award.

This year’s edition of the festival saw six productions in its feature film competition. The six movies, coming from Israel, Belgium, Sweden, Bulgaria, Iran, and Romania, were selected by Ludmila Cvikova. The selection of the short film competition was done by Ionuț Mareș. It included 24 films, both Romanian and foreign, chosen from over 600 productions.

Anonimul took place between August 5 and August 11. A retrospective of the films screened at Anonimul takes place in Bucharest between September 12 and September 14 at the Peasant Museum Cinema.

(Photo: Radu Afloarei)