While the shoot of Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain shows that Romania is becoming an increasingly favoured location for Western crews, local productions are still struggling to raise money to get off the ground

State financing is almost the sole form of production money available to producers, a subject which proved the main theme of the seminars organised as side-events at the annual Transylvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca.

However, Romanian film-makers are increasingly trying to set up international co-productions as a means of sourcing cash. Hungarian producer Laszlo Kantor recently shot Light Falls On Your Face with Romanian participation.

Moreover, leading German arthouse producer Karl Baumgartner co-produced Romanian director Calin Netzer's Maria that was screened as part of the festival's Romanian Days section.

Berlinale programmer Nikolaj Nikitin is certain that many more such co-productions can be expected in the future.

In the course of the seminars Romanian filmmakers were also presented with the funding opportunities offered by Rotterdam Film Festival's Hubert Bals Fund as well as the Balkan Fund for script development.

The participating festival representatives and international filmmakers, including Canadian producer Bob Schultz, also emphasised the importance of marketing and promotion, activities that receive little attention not only in Romania but in most of the Eastern-European region.