Radu Jude's Dracula to have first screening in Romania at Anonimul Film Festival

Dracula, the latest film of Romanian director Radu Jude, will be screened at this year's edition of Anonimul International Film Festival, which takes place between August 11 and August 17 in Sfântu Gheorghe, in the Danube Delta.

The film has been added to the Locarno Film Festival's international competition, where it will have its world premiere.

Starting from the legend of the well-known vampire and the figure of Vlad Țepeș, the film "proposes a series of stories radically different in style and form, from pulp to avant-garde, from literary to grotesque, from fantastic to hyper-realistic." "I tried to offer everything for everyone in Dracula: a commercial film, a meditation on national myths and the history of film, an essay, a vampire film, a popular comedy, a political film, a satire, an erotic film, an action film. It was time for us to give the world a Dracula. I did my best, I hope that the audience will enjoy at least some aspects of the film," Radu Jude said.

Jude's Kontinental '25, for which the director won this year the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay, will also be screened at the Sfântu Gheorghe festival, outside of the competition.

The festival will open with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Jeunes Mères, a film that received the Best Screenplay Award and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The film will be released in local cinemas on October 10, 2025.

Teodora Ana Mihai's second feature film, Traffic, inspired by the real case of a burglary carried out by a group of Romanians at the Kunsthal Rotterdam in October 2012, will also be screened at the festival, in addition to the documentary films Dad, by Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc, and Tooth and Nail/ După cioate by Mihai Gavril Dragolea and Radu Mocanu.

Besides this, Anonimul Film Festival has a feature film competition and two short film competitions for Romanian and international productions.

"We have a very special competition program this year, a mix of five directorial voices from Romania, Georgia, Norway, Turkey, and Poland that are worth following," Ludmila Cvikova, who was in charge of the feature film competition selection, explained. All five titles come to Sfântu Gheorghe after having had their world premiere in some of the most important competitions in the world, namely Toronto, Venice, Locarno, or Karlovy Vary.