Taifas: Balkan film and culture fest to feature Radu Jude retrospective, music, and literary events

The third edition of Taifas Balkan Film and Culture Festival, set to take place in Timișoara between October 13 and October 19, will include a retrospective dedicated to Romanian director Radu Jude.

The public will be able to see the director's short films, in addition to a preview of his latest production, Dracula, presented at the Locarno festival this summer.

The selection of short films will take viewers from The Tube with a Hat, a tender road-movie about a child and his father, to Alexandra, The Morning and Shadow of a Cloud, intimate stories about fragile relationships and revealing encounters. The program also includes screenings of It Can Pass through the Wall, The Marshal's Two Executions, a visual essay on history and propaganda, Caricaturana, a collage inspired by Eisenstein and Daumier, and The Potemkinists, a comedy about art and memory.

A Film for Friends, an experiment filmed as an anonymous clip from the internet, about a man who records his farewell message, and The Dead Nation, the documentary essay about Costică Acsinte's photographs, will also be screened.

Ivana Mladenović's Sorella di Clausura, awarded at the Sarajevo film festival for best direction, will be presented at the festival as a national premiere. Filmed in Timișoara, Bucharest, and Moldova Nouă, the film is an empathetic parody of romantic melodramas, with Katia Pascariu in the lead role.

The festival's selection features award-winning films from major festivals of the year, including Locarno, Venice, Sarajevo, São Paulo, and Hot Docs, by directors from North Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Romania. Among them are God Will Not Help, directed by Hana Jušić; Possibility of Paradise, directed by Mladen Kovačević; Riviera, directed by Orfeas Peretzis; Arni, directed by Dorka Vermes; Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master, directed by Ivan Salatić; Yugo Florida, directed by Vladimir Tagić; She Loved Blossoms More