No less than thirteen titles directed by filmmakers of Romanian origin have been selected in the National Short Film Competition of the 15th edition of Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF), which will take place between September 22–28 at Cinema Elvire Popesco, Cinemateca Eforie, and Cinema Union, under the theme Common Ground. Selected from a record number of over one hundred submissions, the thirteen short films, eleven of which were directed by female filmmakers, are helmed by both names already familiar to the BIEFF audience, such as Xandra Popescu, Andreea Borțun, and Teona Galgoțiu, and filmmakers presented for the first time in the festival’s selection.
“These thirteen short films couldn’t be more different; it would be odd, to say the least, to claim a shared, «national» aesthetic, nor would it be desirable. However, we can observe other things—for example, a steadily decreasing interest in self-portraiture, in the first-person narrative, in favor of a growing interest in the bigger picture, recent history (especially Romanian communism), and radical social ideas. The general feeling of the films is one of understanding and anguish: historical, political, ecological, spiritual, emotional, a feeling of discomfort with the present. The truth is, it’s been a long, long year,” said Călin Boto, the competition’s curator.
The films in the National Competition of BIEFF.15 will be screened on September 27 at Cinemateca Eforie, in two separate short film programs, each followed by Q&A sessions with the teams behind the respective titles.
In the first program of the National Competition, the audience will have the chance to watch Xandra Popescu’s latest film, Erogenesis, a queer and playful sci-fi that comes straight from the Short Film Competition of the Cannes Critics’ Week. I Am Also Part of the Three Turns by visual artist Monica Maria Moraru explores the effects of the 1977 Vrancea earthquake and the ensuing flood in a small town in Buzău, during a time of aggressive urbanization under the communist regime, while We Lived Slowly in Times of Peace by Moldovan filmmaker Kristina Jacot blends the poetry of Armenian writer Tatev Chakhian with images from the Prelinger Archives and of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war to capture the bittersweet stillness of peace, while the quiet tension of conflict lingers in the air.
The video poem Light That Never Quite Returns the Same by Andreea Borțun takes a look at several utopian communities that existed in the 19th century, while Lavinia Petrache’s Fracti, nominated earlier this year for a Best Animated Short Gopo Award, sees the individual desire for change threaten the routine of an ethereal village floating in the sky. Two Gopo Award winners return to BIEFF with highly personal new works: Alma Buhagiar with Patchwork with Grandpa and Grandma, a charming “let’s-make-a-film” game she plays with her grandparents, and Teona Galgoțiu with Take Me to the Water, which draws from Strauss Jr.’s The Blue Danube to explore the memory of her great-grandfather, one of the political prisoners subjected to forced labor by the communist regime on the Danube–Black Sea Canal.
A sensorial meditation on the intersection of myth, landscape, and body, set against the backdrop of the Swiss Alps and the Transylvanian Carpathians, Stones and their Whispers of old Stories by David Drăgan and Noah Kohlbrenner will open the second program of short films in the National Competition. Also exploring connection is the spectacular Hélène F. A (post)mining allegory, in which two women, played by the directors themselves, Larisa Crunțeanu and Sonja Hornung, find themselves abandoned in the middle of a mining quarry. The video essay Whiteout Conditions by Laura Săvuțiu analyzes the television mythologies surrounding the “bad” winter weather in old meteorological broadcasts, while Alle Dicu invites us into a world where the oceans have disappeared with Our Sea. If Irina Tempea keeps a video journal of her life following a multiple sclerosis diagnosis in In My Head, with Oedipus Re:dux, Cosmin Nicolae pays homage to Pier Paolo Pasolini, starting from his 1967 journey to Romania, when the Italian multihyphenate was in search of locations to bring Sophocles’ tragedy to the big screen.
The films selected in the National Competition of BIEFF.15 will compete for the Best Romanian Short Film Awards. The winner will be chosen by a jury composed of Emilia Mazik, head of industry at Go Short – International Short Film Festival in the Netherlands, a member of the selection committee at Film Fest Gent in Belgium, and a strategic board member of Talking Shorts, an online magazine dedicated to the short film medium; Laurence Rilly, short film programme manager at ARTE in Strasbourg and coordinator of the weekly short film magazine programme Short Circuit; and Teresa Vieira, film critic, cultural journalist, and artistic director of BEAST International Film Festival in Portugal.
International Workshop for Young Curators Hosted for the First Time by BIEFF
This year, BIEFF is hosting for the first time the European Workshop for New Curators, an initiative of The European Network for Film Discourse (The END), an international network of festivals which BIEFF joined in 2025. The workshop aims to support the training and professional development of a new generation of curators specializing in short film programming.
The first part of the workshop took place in July in Italy, during Lago Film Fest, with the second part scheduled to be held in Bucharest, between September 23–28. The workshop is coordinated by Daniella Shreir – film critic, curator, and founder of the initiatives Another Gaze and Another Screen. The young curators participating in the workshop are Alexandra Sirotenko (RU/CZ/NL), Cindy Chehab (LB/PT), May Nguyen (DE), Najrin Islam (IN/UK), Raouf Moussa (NL/TN/BE), and Tania Hernandez Gonzalez (ES). They were selected following a public call for applications held between March and April 2025.
The workshop is hosted by the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” and is supported by the “Sorin Botoșeneanu” Center for Pedagogy and Image Studies.
The BIEFF.15 Passes Are Now Available
Passes for the 2025 Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival are now on sale on Eventbook.ro. Aiming to make the festival experience more accessible to a wide range of audiences, regardless of economic status, this year BIEFF has adopted a “pay what you can” policy, including four pricing tiers for general passes. The festival encourages audiences to join this gesture of solidarity by choosing one of the four specially priced passes based on their individual means.