Works by contemporary directors Rodrigo Cortés, Rainer Sarnet, and Adilkhan Yerzhanov will be screened at this year's edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in the event's 3x3 section.

All three directors will attend TIFF to meet with the public.

From the eclectic filmography of the Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés, the public can see Buried (2010), a thriller about an American truck driver (played by Ryan Reynolds) who wakes up buried alive in a wooden coffin in the middle of Iraq, and Escape (2024), his latest work, telling the story of a highly unusual character: a man willing to do anything to end up in prison. The film is produced by Martin Scorsese.

Cortés' filmmaking journey began in his teenage years when he borrowed a Super 8 camera from his uncle and started experimenting. After a series of award-winning short films, he made his feature debut with The Contestant (2007), a dark comedy about a university professor who wins the lottery only to discover that, after taxes, he doesn't have enough left to pay off his debts.

The films of Rainer Sarnet are screened at TIFF as part of the festival's Focus Estonia program. The public can see The Idiot (2011), a contemporary, personal reinterpretation of Dostoevsky's novel; November (2017), a haunting fairy tale shot in black-and-white; and The Invisible Fight (2023), a story about a border guard between the Soviet Union and China striving for enlightenment.

Described as one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary Eastern European cinema, Sarnet is known for his "cinematic vision blending magical realism, Baltic folklore, and visual experimentation."

TIFF will also host a mini-retrospective featuring three of the most recent films of Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov. From his work, filled with cinephile references and homages, TIFF will screen Moor (2024), a drama following a nameless mercenary haunted by the ghosts of his victims as he tries to rescue his sister-in-law from a trafficking ring; Yellow Cat (2020), the tale of a former convict obsessed with cinema who dreams of opening a movie theater in the mountains; and Cadet (2024) a look at the toxic and violent world of a military academy rocked by a series of mysterious deaths.

TIFF takes place between June 13 and June 22 in Cluj.

(Photo: Rainer Sarnet -The Invisible Fight, courtesy of TIFF)

simona@romania-insider.com