“It sounded like the great new adventure that I needed in my life, so I just said yes, let’s do it,” says Adrian Bîlă of taking the role as head of industry at the Tranilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) at the beginning of this year.
He succeeds Dumitrana Lupu who decided to return to working in production after three years in the post.
Bîlă says working for more than eight years in film production as well as an actor in different TV series has come in handy for the new role.
“Organising such an event as the RO Days Industry Events takes all the skills acquired in my previous production roles, but also the flexibility to adapt to change while keeping everything alive and fresh. These are things you learn to do as an actor,” Bîlă says.
The centrepiece of the industry platform – Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS) – is now in its 12th edition. It will present 10 feature film projects in development from the region to potential co-production partners and financiers at a public pitching session on June 19. This will be followed by one-to-one meetings.
“We had 40 submissions for TPS this year, most of them being quite distinct through their themes and set-ups,” Bîlă says. “The selection team tried to compile a mix of distinct, bold projects, quite advanced in the development process, in order to ensure a real chance at finding the right partner. What all projects have in common is a strong sense of authorship, stories that feel personal, and are ready to connect with the international industry.”
This year’s selection includes four projects by Romanian filmmakers, including debut features by Lucia Chicoș (Horseshoe) and the husband-and-wife team of scriptwriter-film critic Ilinca Straton and director Eugen Dediu (At King’s Gate).
There are also debuts from Georgian filmmaker George Todria (Under The Crescent Moon) and Hungary’s Lili Laura Tóth (Magda).
TPS projects have a good track record of finding partners, financing and going into production. Those pitched at previous editions of TPS that have substantially progressed and are seeking international festival premieres include Romanian filmmaker Andreea Borțun’s 2020 TPS project Blue Banks, produced by Atelier de Film as a co-production with France’s Films de Force Majeure and Slovenia’s Perfo.
Two Turkish debut features pitched at TPS in 2022 and 2023 respectively, are now moving forward. Both Vayka Film’s production of Alican Durbas’ Lo-Fi and Elif Sözen’s Veha were among the works in progress showcased in the 2025 edition of Meetings on the Bridge in Istanbul in April.
Furthermore, Radu Mihai’s debut feature Monarch, a project from the 2022 TPS line-up, began shooting at locations in Romania at the beginning of this month. It is about a man endowed with a superhuman power to cut off electricity,
The Romanian Film Days programme includes six documentaries screening in the competition (out of eight in total) and out-of-competition screenings of films such as Radu Jude’s Silver Bear winner Kontinental ‘25 and the world premiere of Tudor Giurgiu’s documentary The Spruce Forest. The latter reconstructs the Soviet slaughter of thousands of Romanians in the Fântâna Albă Forest in 1941.
In addition, sales agents, distributors and festival programmers will have an exclusive preview of four new feature films in the Closed Screenings section on June 20 and 21. They are Moldovan actor Valeriu Andruiță’s directorial debut The Circle, which was pitched at TPS in 2023; Andrei Epure’s mystery drama Don’t Let Me Die, starring Romanian-American actress Elina Löwensohn; Tudor Jurgiu’s coming-of-age tale On Their Own; and Adrian Sitaru and Vlad Popa’s Harakiri.
The RO Days industry platform will again be hosting the Drama Room, Full Moon Creative Lab and Transilvania Talent Lab initiatives as well as a series of panels to address issues including audience design and the application of AI tools in film and TV production.
Peter Todorov, executive director of the Bulgarian National Film Centre, and Marios Psaras, cultural officer at the Cyprus Cinema Office, will give presentations on opportunities for co-production with their countries.
This year, the fifth edition of the Drama Room programme is showcasing four series projects that will be pitched on June 20 to a jury comprised of PRO TV’s Gabriela Iacob, Danish producer, educationalist and script consultant Vinca Wiedemann, and acquisition consultant, producer and content strategist Emmanuel Eckert. The winner will take home the prize of a development agreement offered by PRO TV.
The second edition of the Full Moon Creative Lab, co-funded by the European Union and dedicated to professionals specialising in genre TV series in the fields of thriller, horror, and fantasy, will be in Cluj with projects from Ireland (Normal Porn For Normal People by Hiram Harrington), Hungary (Marciban by Zsuzsanna Bak) and France (Under The Mountain by Madeleine Feret Fleury).
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