Balkan film festival opens in Transylvania

The Transilvania International Film festival (TIFF) opened Friday in Cluj (north-west) with 240 movies from 47 countries and special guest German director Wim Wenders to appear.

"Despite the economic crises, this is the most ambitious edition of the festival so far,"chairman Tudor Giurgiu told journalists.

Besides the official competition, which gives the floor to European directors at the dawn of their career, the festival (www.tiff.ro) will also look at themes such as collective films, a genre recently popularised by movies like the Romanian "Tales from the Golden Age" or the French "Paris, I love you."

About 40 short-films will be presented in competition together with Romanian cinema's most recent works.

German director Wenders, president of the European Film Academy, is among the festival's special guests and is to hold a masterclass on Thursday.

For the first time, movies will be projected outdoor in the Unirii Square in Cluj, one of the largest medieval squares in Eastern Europe.

Winners are to be announced a day before closure, on June 5.