Australian drama wins top prize at Romania's 2020 TIFF festival

Babyteeth, the coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Australian Shannon Murphy, won the Transilvania trophy at this year's edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), held in Cluj-Napoca.

The film, awarded "for the joy of life told through the experience of our passage beyond," received a EUR 10,000 prize.

Babyteeth was screened in the opening of the 2019 Venice competition. For his role in the film, Toby Wallace received the Marcello Mastroianni Prize for the best young actor.

The jury of this year's official competition was made up of film producer Ada Solomon, director Adina Pintilie, writer Philip O'Ceallaigh, playwright Csaba Székely, and actor Hatházi András.

It awarded the Best Director Prize, amounting to EUR 3,500, ex-aequo to Tim Mielants for Patrick and Zheng Lu Xinyuan for The Cloud in Her Room. Tim Mielants's Patrick impressed the jury with a story that "managed to create a wonderful yet strange world with the most natural ease" and Zheng Lu Xinyuan's production as "this cinematic/ cinephile delight reveals a remarkable emerging talent to watch."

The Special Jury Award, amounting to EUR 1,500, went to Svetla Tsotsorkova's Sister, "a strange, surprising, comic tale in which a trail of lies leads to the truth." She was previously present in the TIFF competition with Thirst.

At the same time, actress Evgeniya Gromova, the star of Fidelity, received the Best Performance Award, worth EUR 1,000. The prize was awarded "for the incisive foray into the private life of a woman in crisis."

The FIPRESCI Prize, offered by the International Federation of Film Critics to a title in the Romanian Film Days section, went to Everything Will Not Be Fine, Adrian Pîrvu and Helena Maksyom's documentary road movie that follows the lives of young people affected by the Chernobyl disaster. Andrei Zincă's So, What's Freedom? received the Romanian Days Audience Award, worth EUR 1,500.

Radu Ciorniciuc's Acasă, My Home, a film previously awarded at Sundance, la DOK.fest Munchen and Krakow Film Festival, took home the Romanian Days Award for Best Feature Film. It received EUR 10,000 in film stock and production services offered by CineLabs Romania.

The Romanian Days Award for Best Debut, worth EUR 1,000, went to Dorian Boguță's