The 28th edition of the European Film Festival will start in Bucharest on Europe Day, on May 9, and will end in Chisinau on June 8, during the weekend of the European Parliament elections.
In Bucharest, the Festival takes place between May 9 – 15, at Sala Luceafărul (Opening Gala on May 9), Cinema Elvire Popesco and Cinema Union (May 10 – 15) and Cinemateca Eforie (May 11 – 12).
The program will continue as follows: Botoșani: May 10 – 12, Cinema Unirea; Târgu Mureș: May 16 – 18, Mureș County Museum – History Section (Citadel), Multimedia Hall; Sibiu: May 17 – 19, Gala – Sibiu State Philharmonic, Thalia Hall | Democratic Forum of Germans in Sibiu, Hall of Mirrors; Chitila: May 17 – 19, Valea Mangului Park; Curtea de Argeș: 18 – 19 May, La Manac; Brașov: May 24 – 26, Reduta Cultural Center; Chisinau: June 6 – 8, Odeon Cinema.
“When weapons speak, the muses are silent, Cicero said two thousand years ago. We propose not to be discouraged by the dense period we are going through and to encourage the muses to express themselves. Go to exhibitions, to the theater, to concerts, to the movies! Together with our European partners, we invite you to come to the European Film Festival, to see films that help us better understand the era we live in, or that, on the contrary, make us forget it for two hours. We continue the tradition of previous editions of stopping in cities where European film does not reach easily, but the novelty is that we have also included Chisinau on the 2024 map of the festival. It is our way of celebrating the fact that the European Union decided, in December 2023, to open accession negotiations with the Republic of Moldova, and to pay tribute to its European path, with the prospect of being with Romania again, as member states of UnIon”, said Liviu Jicman, president of ICR, vice president of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture).
This year, FFE proposes a generous program of 40 feature films (34 in national premiere) and 2 selections of short films of which 16 films are directed by women and 2 films – co-directed by women.
“We mark 35 years since the Revolution with films that talk about the rights won. Perhaps most importantly, we enjoy freedom of movement, the very premise of the Austrian documentary Maine mă duc, filmed mainly in Romania. The Rye Horn, winner of the grand prize at the San Sebastian festival, evokes the freedom to dispose of our bodies as we wish. Finally, Direct Action, the big winner of the Encounters section at the Berlinale, is a monument dedicated to freedom of expression and protest.
However, this does not remove the perspective of abuses, as we learn from Blaga's Lessons / Blaga's Lessons, the winner of the grand prize at the Karlovy Vary festival, or of inequities, which are the basis of Plouă în casa / Il pleut dans la maison, presented for the first time in the section Semaine de la critique at the 2023 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. But let's remember the reasons for joy: we are free to choose what content we consume, free to express ourselves as we see fit in relation to them, free to dream.
And the 2024 edition of the European Film Festival confirms an undeniable reality and at the same time a luxury, one that may seem minor, but no less a luxury, if we look at it in contrast to the past: we have free time at the movies!“, said Cătălin Olaru, artistic director of FFE.
The full schedule will be announced soon. In Bucharest, tickets can be purchased online, on the Eventbook.ro platform and directly from cinemas, and in the rest of the cities access is free.
