In June 2026, Romania becomes a cultural map: TIFF.25 turns Cluj into the film capital, FITS brings hundreds of shows to Sibiu, Bookfest returns to Bucharest, and LYNX Festival puts nature in the foreground in Brașov. Plus: where you can see Cristian Mungiu’s films.
TIFF.25. The best celebration is a good movie
There are festivals that age beautifully and there are festivals that grow. TIFF is part of the second category. When, in 2001, a few cinephiles from Cluj put on paper the project of a film festival in the heart of Transylvania, no one knew for sure if it would survive a single year. It started timidly, with a few screenings in two theaters and 8,700 viewers. Today, over 100,000 people come to Cluj-Napoca every year, and the city is part of the UNESCO City of Film network from 2021. The 25th edition runs from June 12 to 21, 2026, and it doesn’t settle for nostalgia. With 204 films from around the world, international guests, exhibitions, performances and special screenings, the festival aims to celebrate not just cinema, but the community that made it possible.
The evening of June 12, in Piata Unirii, will be more than just an opening gala. The public will exclusively see the first images from the documentary “NADIA”, in the presence of Nadia Comăneca. The documentary, signed by the trio Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu and Tudor D. Popescu, built from archives and exclusive interviews with dozens of personalities, is to be released in 2027. Immediately after, the national premiere of the film that officially opens the festival: “3 days in September”, Tudor Giurgiu’s comedy, after the world premiere in Rotterdam.
If the opening Gala belongs to Giurgiu, much of the artistic tension of the edition comes from Radu Jude. “Diary of a Chambermaid” had its world premiere in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes section of Cannes, where it was received with minutes of applause at the open stage. The film brings Romania and France into dialogue, migration, domestic work and power relations in Europe today. After the world premiere at Cannes, the film will be shown for the first time in Romania at TIFF, and will arrive in cinemas in the fall.
The special program “25 Years Later” proposes a return to 2001, with ten titles that defined the beginning of the millennium in cinema. On their list: David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” for which the director won the Best Director Award at Cannes, Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” which won the Berlin Golden Bear and the Oscar for animated film, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “Amélie,” one of the most beloved European films of recent decades.
The festival reserves a central place for Corneliu Porumboiu, one of the most important directors of the Romanian New Wave on the international stage. Two decades after his feature film debut, TIFF is dedicating a full-length retrospective to him, from “Wasn’t it or wasn’t it?” (2006) to “La Gomera” (2019). Double winner of the Transilvania Trophy, Porumboiu will receive the special award of the anniversary edition, the TIFF.25 Trophy, and will hold a masterclass open to the public and industry professionals. As a bonus, the director’s debut short films, made immediately after graduating from UNATC, will also be screened.
The Romanian film is also strong in the other sections. Artistic director Mihai Chirilov described 2026 as “the year of debutants”: actors who go behind the camera, among them Valeriu Andriuță, Maria Popistașu and Cristian Bota. The documentaries bring solid titles: “Lenin’s Pawn”, a Romania-Republic of Moldova co-production signed by Dragoș Turea, and “Wild Delta”, the new project of the team behind “Wild Romania”.
Sine-concerts add another dimension. The program brings three titles that cross different eras and styles: Mircea Săucan’s “Meandre” (1967), one of the most daring proposals of Romanian cinema from the 60s, and René Clair’s “Parisul doarme” (1925), one of the first attempts at fantastic cinema in the history of cinema. “Notte Morricone” combines choreography, music and cinematography in a tribute to composer Ennio Morricone. The “Dear Marilyn” exhibition brings unique photos of Marilyn Monroe taken by Sam Shaw, one of the most important visual witnesses of 1950s Hollywood, 100 years after the birth of the actress.
TIFF also introduces the “Janovics Jenő” Award, dedicated to the memory of the pioneer of Cluj cinema who, at the beginning of the 1910s, transformed Cluj into a center of film production. The first laureate will be Roman Gutek, Polish filmmaker and cultural manager, founder of several festivals and one of the most important promoters of art film in Europe. Among the other guests, Aidan Gillen – the Irish actor from “Game of Thrones” and “Peaky Blinders” – will be part of the jury of the Official Competition, and the Excellence Award goes to the actress Anda Onesa, a landmark of Romanian cinema from the 80s.
At 25, TIFF doesn’t celebrate the past. He puts it on the screen and moves on.
FITS. Theater, an “interior” art
In one of his poems, Marin Sorescu said: “I am an interior man because I am only a soul/ And the soul is interior”. Nothing seems to fit better with the “hat” that FITS wears this year: SOUL. Between June 19 and 28, 2026, the 33rd edition of the Sibiu International Theater Festival brings together artists from 82 countries, who will offer the public more than 840 cultural events in 83 venues.
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The headliner of the edition is Fanny Ardant. The French actress comes to Sibiu with the “Cassandre” show, on June 26, at the Thalia Hall of the State Philharmonic. Also on the big stages of the festival, Milo Rau & NTGent bring “Medea’s Children”, on June 26 and 27 at the Culture Factory, and Emma Dante signs “The Angel of the House”, a Piccolo Teatro di Milano production, on June 26 and 27 at the “Radu Stanca” National Theatre. “Israel & Mohamed”, an original collaboration between Israel Galvan and Mohamed El Khatib, plays on June 25 and 26, and Luk Perceval’s “Sex, Money and Hunger” opens the festival on the very first days, on June 19 and 20. Sibiu will also become an open-air stage, with performances in Piața Mare, Piața Mică, Bălcescu pedestrian street and Habermann Piața. This year the festival also hosts the general meeting of the Circostrada network, bringing together some of the most important theater and street circus companies in the world. Almost half of the events are free.
The Walk of Fame in the Cetății park is enriched with eight new stars. Among those honored are Fanny Ardant, conductor Cristian Măcelaru, actress Ofelia Popii, master puppeteer Margareta Niculescu, Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, playwright Emma Dante and writer Elfriede Jelinek, laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. An absolute first: for the first time, an institution, the Yamamoto Noh Theater from Japan, will be honored on the Alee.
And because we are at the SOUL chapter, also in Sibiu, and also at the same time as FITS, the “Transilvania | Extravaganza” opening is taking place, the largest retrospective dedicated to the painter Ștefan Câltia. In more than 1,000 square meters, the exhibition brings together approximately 80 works – emblematic pieces from different periods of the artist’s career, works from the archive of the Ștefan Câltia Foundation, private collections and recent works – and can be visited until August 16 in the space of the former pedagogical school of the Ursuline Monastery in Sibiu.
FILM. Under the Cannes hat
“Fjord” just won the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2026 – the second supreme trophy of Cristian Mungiu’s career, awarded by the jury chaired by Park Chan-wook. The film tells the story of a family of Romanians who emigrated to Norway, who raise their children according to the rules of an old world. Mungiu doesn’t judge them and maybe that’s what divided the artistic world in two. Cast: Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. The release in cinemas is scheduled for the second half of the year.
Until then, many of his films can be watched on HBO Max: “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”, “După dealuri”, “Occident”, “Bacalaureat”, “Memories from the Golden Age”, “MRN” – like an axis mundi of the Romanian New Wave. A good time to start if you haven’t seen Mungiu yet: “4,3,2” was placed by the BBC at number 15 in the ranking of the 100 best films of the 21st century.
Nature, queen in Brașov
LYNX Festival is the first and only festival in Romania dedicated exclusively to nature photography and documentary film. The fourth edition takes place in Brașov between June 1 and 7, 2026, in five spaces in the city, with free participation.
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10 documentaries about nature from the USA, India, Germany, Austria, Great Britain, France, Canada and Romania will be presented in Brașov, most of them in the national premiere and followed by discussions with international filmmakers whose productions have enjoyed festival and public success. The headliner: “Le Chant des Forêts” by Vincent Munier, considered the most watched French documentary of the last 20 years with almost 1.3 million viewers, double awarded at César 2026, for best documentary and best sound. He will be joined by world-renowned filmmakers: Martin Dohrn, Toby Nowlan, Lianne and Will Steenkamp, all physically present for audience discussions.
Summer fair
The Bookfest season begins again, and between June 3 and 7, 2026, Romexpo becomes, as every year, the largest temporary library in Romania. Bookfest reaches its 19th edition, with more than 200 exhibitors announced and free admission to the public.
Over 150 exhibitors will be present in pavilion B2, including the main publishers in the market: Humanitas, Litera, Polirom, Nemira, Editura Trei, each with book launches, meetings with authors and fair discounts. The list includes hundreds of new titles, from contemporary literature and history to books for children and teenagers, but also many special events, debates, autograph sessions. The 2026 edition has Bulgaria as its guest of honor, with a delegation of over 20 authors and publishers, including writers recently translated into Romania and important names such as Georgi Gospodinov, present at the launches and debates.
For readers, Bookfest remains one of the best times of the year to stock up for the holidays: children’s books, beach reads or long novels for train and plane rides. The message remains simple: come in, compare, buy direct from the publishers and turn your vacation into a list of stories, not just destinations.
