The best films from the Tran­sil­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val 2018

“I want­ed to unlearn my ideas about inti­ma­cy,” con­fessed Adi­na Pin­tilie when she intro­duced her doc­u­men­tary Touch Me Not to a sold-out crowd at the Vic­to­ria Cin­e­ma in Cluj-Napoca. ​“I want­ed to cre­ate a sys­tem where fic­tion could work as a safe­ty net to explore per­son­al areas of our lives.” Pintilie’s con­tro­ver­sial win­ner of the Berlin Film Festival’s Gold­en Bear was the high­light of this year’s Tran­sil­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. A provoca­tive explo­ration of sex­u­al­i­ty, her film spear­head­ed a selec­tion of this year’s pro­gramme that under­scores the com­plex rela­tion­ship between mod­ernising cul­tures and sex­u­al identity.

This year’s theme of iden­ti­ty seems fit­ting for a fes­ti­val under­go­ing a peri­od of intense self-explo­ration regard­ing its role with­in the indus­try. Through­out its 17-year his­to­ry the fes­ti­val has con­tributed to the glob­al rise of Roman­ian cin­e­ma by pro­vid­ing a plat­form for home­grown film­mak­ers like Pin­tilie to show­case their work. Yet at the same time this has been con­tin­gent on the festival’s will­ing­ness to exploit the goth­ic image of the region to attract for­eign indus­try and press.

Described as ​“an open invi­ta­tion to dis­cuss inti­ma­cy”, Pintilie’s exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary weaves togeth­er fic­tion and non-fic­tion tech­niques in an attempt to break free from both con­ven­tion­al modes of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, as well as the taboos sur­round­ing sex­u­al­i­ty. She chron­i­cles the emo­tion­al jour­ney of Lau­ra Ben­son, a 50-year-old woman who has issues with phys­i­cal inti­ma­cy – although as the film pro­gress­es it becomes appar­ent that Lau­ra is mere­ly a stand in for the direc­tor, who has a fraught rela­tion­ship with her own sex­u­al identity.

Pin­tilie employs a pletho­ra of diverse naked bod­ies to chal­lenge notions of beau­ty and attrac­tion, with Lau­ra employ­ing ther­a­pists, pros­ti­tutes and a trans­sex­u­al sex-work­er to aid her jour­ney of dis­cov­ery. Spend­ing time with these indi­vid­u­als, the audi­ence is offered var­ied and can­did rep­re­sen­ta­tions of sex. How­ev­er, role-play­ing with a sex heal­er and evenings at a BDSM club are inti­mate­ly pre­sent­ed yet nev­er voyeuris­tic. Pintilie’s cam­era doesn’t linger or leer, instead she patient­ly observes these inter­ac­tions, allow­ing the audi­ence to see – but nev­er judge – each of these char­ac­ters as they begin to under­stand their own bodies.

Touch Me Not explores sex­u­al iden­ti­ty through a sym­pho­ny of voic­es, but it’s often an incred­i­bly per­son­al jour­ney; one many face alone. How­ev­er, in recent years the inter­net has giv­en a voice to peo­ple in ways that have trans­formed cul­tur­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. The down­side of this new age of hyper-shar­ing is glar­ing­ly obvi­ous and the emer­gence of social net­work­ing has cre­at­ed a prob­lem of how the self is to be under­stood in the vir­tu­al world. This dis­par­i­ty between online and offline iden­ti­ties is the con­flict that burns at the heart of Mar­cio Reolon and Fil­ipe Matzem­bach­er ​‘s Hard Paint, a pow­er­ful dra­ma about the search for human con­nec­tion through technology.

The film fol­lows Pedro (Shico Menegat), a reclu­sive young man from the Brazil­ian city of Por­to Ale­gre, who earns a liv­ing by smear­ing his body with neon paint and strip­ping in online cha­t­rooms. Unlike Pin­tille, Reolon and Matzem­bach­er present the body as an object; con­tort­ed by eco­nom­ic neces­si­ty. That is until he meets Leo (Bruno Fer­nan­des) a dancer and fel­low cha­t­room per­former who teach­es him how to dis­man­tle the arti­fi­cial con­struc­tion of his vir­tu­al per­son­al­i­ty and expe­ri­ence a more authen­tic love. Despite its cold and some­what enig­mat­ic first act, Hard Paint builds grad­u­al­ly into an unin­hib­it­ed mood piece, in which del­i­cate human­ism pre­vails in a dig­i­tal world.

Online love is also at the core of Bog­dan Theodor Olteanu’s Sev­er­al Con­ver­sa­tions About a Very Tall Girl. Lazi­ly billed as Romania’s answer to Blue is the Warmest Colour, Olteanu eschews the sen­su­al­ism of sex­u­al awak­en­ing and the thrill of first love in favour of a more ten­der and emo­tion­al­ly charged tale about a tra­di­tion­al Mol­da­vian girl’s strug­gle to insti­gate a long-term rela­tion­ship with anoth­er woman.

Played by Flo­renti­na Nas­tase and Sil­vana Mihai, the two girls remain name­less in an attempt to make their rela­tion­ship less spe­cif­ic, but it nev­er detracts from the emo­tion on dis­play. ​“There are no les­bians in my home­town” exclaims one of the girls, as she chats via Skype to the oth­er about an ex-lover they both share. This con­ver­sa­tion is the ini­tial spark of an erot­ic and emo­tion­al con­nec­tion; but as the pair grow clos­er, the gap between them becomes notice­ably wider. Set almost entire­ly with­in a cramped Bucharest apart­ment, where the prej­u­dices of the world out­side are implied but nev­er spo­ken, Olteanu beau­ti­ful cap­tures a truth most oth­er direc­tors strug­gle to artic­u­late; that falling in love is to be con­front­ed with who you real­ly are.

The prej­u­dices of a tra­di­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty were also at the heart of Dis­obe­di­ence, the lat­est study of female iden­ti­ty by Sebastián Lelio, the Oscar-win­ner behind 2017’s A Fan­tas­tic Woman. The Chilean writer/director’s Eng­lish-lan­guage debut is a beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed, but odd­ly unem­phat­ic dra­ma about truth and lib­er­a­tion in an Ortho­dox Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty that, although lack­ing in the allur­ing style and esca­lat­ing melo­dra­ma of his pre­vi­ous work, remains an inci­sive and sen­si­tive char­ac­ter study.

Rachel Weisz stars as Ronit, a New York pho­tog­ra­ph­er who’s forced to return to Lon­don after learn­ing about the death of her estranged father. How­ev­er, she quick­ly finds her­self sub­merged in the same world that shunned her decades ear­li­er for embark­ing in a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with her best friend Esti (Rachel McAdams). Although unex­pect­ed­ly som­bre, Dis­obe­di­ence is not dis­sim­i­lar to A Fan­tas­tic Woman, with both films con­cerned with women unable to express them­selves in high­ly con­ser­v­a­tive soci­eties. The con­flict between reli­gion and iden­ti­ty has been tack­led count­less times in cin­e­ma, yet here Lelio presents the com­plex­i­ties and mutu­al­i­ty of the rela­tion­ship between the two.

Dis­course sur­round­ing the con­struc­tion of sex­u­al iden­ti­ty rarely involves the inter­sec­tions of class, nation­al­i­ty and reli­gion, all of which play a part in self-aware­ness, per­cep­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. By pro­ject­ing these issues through mul­ti­ple lens­es, this year’s Tran­sil­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val demon­strates that cin­e­ma is a nur­tur­ing space for hon­est and lib­er­at­ing explo­rations of identity.

For more infor­ma­tion on this year’s Tran­sil­va­nia Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val vis­it tiff​.ro