Tickets are now on sale for the American Independent Film Festival! The 5th edition of the festival will take place this year from June 23rd – 27th at the Romanian Peasant Museum Cinema and Food Hood, and will bring audiences the latest American independent productions, many films being a unique opportunity to see them on a cinema screen.

From the program, published on filmedefestival.ro, you can choose Minari starring Youn Yuh-Jung, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and became known all over the world thanks to her American Academy Award acceptance speech, Lorelei – winner of the Jury Prize at the Deauville Film Festival and The Assistant, director Kitty Green’s latest film, “powerful in a strange and frightening way” as Vanity Fair titled it.

“A stunningly intimate family portrait, universal in its tenderness” (AP), Minari follows the story of a Korean-American family who move to a farm in Arkansas in search of their own American dream. Amid the challenges of their new life, the couple discovers the undeniable resilience of family and what home really means. The film, which will have its national premiere at AIFF.5, “will break your heart only to put it back together stronger than before” (The Boston Globe).

Lorelei is a working-class fable about a biker, a mermaid and three shades of blue, the first feature film from director Sabrina Doyle, praised by American film critics for the emotional intelligence she brings to her work. The Film Inquiry wrote of her debut: “it rips your heart out of your chest“, and Eye on Film called it “a film that appreciates the value of fantasy in the bleakest of circumstances“.

This year’s selection for the American Independent Film Festival also includes the first fiction film by director Kitty Green, who has made a series of documentaries that have toured the world and been screened in over 140 countries. The Assistant captures the moment when Jane, a recent graduate aspiring to be a film producer, lands her dream job – assistant to a showbiz mogul. As Jane goes about her daily routine at the office, she becomes increasingly aware of the abuse that insidiously colours every aspect of her workday, an accumulation of negatives that Jane decides to confront only to discover the true strength of the system she has entered. Presented in the Official Selection at Sundance, the film has an extraordinary power to polarise attention and Julia Garner, the actress in the lead role “delivers a masterclass of small, uncertain gestures” (IndieWire).

Between June 23rd -27th, the Romanian Peasant Museum Cinema will also screen Falling (by Viggo Mortensen), The Nest (Sean Durkin), Living in Oblivion (Tom DiCillo) and American Movie (Chris Smith), also awarded the Jury Prize at Sundance and Food Hood: Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen) Slacker (Richard Linklater), Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch) all part of the “ICONIC DEBUTS” section and, of course, the film honoured this year on the festival’s visuals, Bonnie and Clyde directed by Arthur Penn.

The screening schedule and news about films and events at the festival will be updated on filmedefestival.ro, the American Independent Film Festival Facebook page and Instagram: @americanindependentff.

Tickets to screenings at the Romanian Peasant Museum Cinema can be purchased on Eventbook.ro and via the Eventbook network, and admission to all Food Hood screenings is free, subject to seating availability.

AIFF.5 is organised by the Cinemascop Association with the support of: Banca Transilvania and is a cultural project funded by the Ministry of Culture.

Partners: Catena, Europa Cinemas, the DACIN SARA Association, Food Hood, the Romanian Peasant Museum, the Peasant Museum Cinema, Eventbook.

Main media partner: Radio Guerrilla, AGERPRES.

Media partners: Zile și Nopți, Cinemagia, Film Menu, Ziarul Metropolis, LiterNet, The Institute, Films in Frame, Movie News, IQ Ads, Smark, A List Magazine, CineGhid, Munteanu, AARC – All About Romanian Cinema, Radio România Cultural.