Honey Bunny: I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: I love you, Honey Bunny.
Pumpkin: [Standing up with a gun] All right, everybody be cool”, we have an announcement to make:

The American Independent Film Festival, now in its 5th year, will take place between June 23rd – 27th in Bucharest and will present a selection of recent American films that have been celebrated by international critics and audiences at festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Toronto.

Thus, AIFF.5 spectators will have the chance to see Judas and the Black Messiah in Romanian premiere. The film stars British-born actor Daniel Kaluuya, who’s role has brought him awards at the Academy Awards, the Golden Globes, Critics’ the Choice Movie Award, the Actors Guild Award and the BAFTA.

“Kaluuya’s acting performance thrills, intrigues and energises the audience in an almost dangerous way” exclaimed Vulture.

Judas and the Black Messiah is directed by Shaka King and represents a „powerful, and candidly sympathetic, political biography with contemporary relevance” (The Wall Street Journal).

The film tells the story of the betrayal of Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), chairman of the Black Panther Party in late 1960s Chicago, by FBI agent William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield). The film had its world premiere this year at Sundance and, due to restrictions generated by the COVID-19 pandemic overseas,  was subsequently released in only a few theaters in the United States. Romanian viewers will therefore be among the few to see this film on a cinema screen for the time being.

This year’s festival poster pays homage to the cult film to which it is dedicated, with the famous American gangster couple in the foreground in a reinterpretation signed by graphic designer Carmen Gociu. Directed in 1967 by Arthur Penn, Bonnie and Clyde stars Faye Dunaway and Warren Beaty. The film won two Oscars at the time for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress and received eight more nominations at the Academy Awards, since becoming a landmark of American cinema, with an influence felt generations later, one example being the famous exchange of lines from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, used at the beginning of the release.

AIFF audiences will have the opportunity to see or re-watch Bonnie and Clyde on the big screen at this year’s edition.

The full programme of screenings for the 5th edition of AIFF and news about films and events at the festival will be announced in the coming days and can be found on filmedefestival.ro and on the festival’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

The American Independent Film Festival is organised by the Cinemascop Association, bringing the newest, most creative and original American films to the Romanian audience with every edition, organising workshops, debates, master classes with renowned filmmakers and actors, among the guests of previous editions: Joaquin Phoenix, Ethan Hawke, John C. Reilly, Kent Jones, Roberto Minervini, Benh Zeitlin, Jacques Audiard, Kirill Mikhanovski, Merawi Gerima, Maya Hawke and Sebastian Stan.