Transilvania Co-Production Forum Toasts 10 Years Bringing Region’s Top Talents to the World
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Celebrating its tenth anniversary as part of the industry program of the Transilvania Film Festival, the Transilvania Pitch Stop — one of the leading co-production and co-financing platforms for filmmakers from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the wider Black Sea region — will showcase 10 projects by first- and second-time directors searching for potential European partners on June 15 in the historic medieval city of Cluj.
The selection, which includes projects from eight countries, is a diverse crop that ranges from intimate personal dramas to stories casting a wider net, capturing their protagonists in the throes of historical forces. “They are very different this year,” said Dumitrana Lupu, who took over as TIFF’s head of industry in 2022. “We have genre.
We have mystery. We have some magical realism.” For the first time, the organizers selected a documentary to pitch during TPS — “Second Line,” Ukrainian director-producer Olga Stuga’s chronicle of life since the Russian invasion — as well as two Romanian docs for its First Cut Lab, a tailor-made workshop for projects in post-production.
That decision, said Lupu, was a “statement” that for its tenth edition, “it was time to open the industry events to documentary.” Launched in 2014 as a five-day workshop for first- and second-time directors from Romania and Moldova, the TPS expanded in 2017 to include a co-production platform with projects from countries across the region.
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