American Independent Film Festival #8 kicks off with outdoor screenings at Bran Castle on June 7
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness, starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, premieres in Bucharest as part of AIFF 8 immediately after the world premiere in Cannes.
The American Independent Film Festival (AIFF) returns for its 8th edition with the latest and most acclaimed independent productions made in the US, which can be seen from 7-13 June in Bucharest and, for the first time this year, in the magical setting of Bran Castle on 7-8 June.
HIT MAN (Richard Linklater) will open the festival on Friday 7 June, both at the Elvire Popesco Cinema in Bucharest and outdoors in the courtyard of Bran Castle.
Kinds of Kindness, the latest film by Yorgos Lanthimos, which will have its international premiere on 17 May in competition at Cannes, will close the festival in Bucharest on Thursday 13 June, with two simultaneous screenings at the Elvire Popesco and at the Peasant Museum Cinema, the two venues in Bucharest hosting the festival screenings.
For the first time in the history of the festival and Bran Castle, AIFF 8 is organising premiere screenings of films on 7 and 8 June at dusk in the castle courtyard. The proposal of AIFF 8 is to reconnect the Romanian audience, but also potential foreign tourists, with the beauty of open-air cinema, accentuated by the unique setting and breathtaking atmosphere of one of the most beautiful places in Romania.
“AIFF 8 continues its mission to offer Romanian audiences films that are more than just entertainment, to mediate the dialogue between the audience and the filmmakers, to cultivate the experience of watching cinema films as a social event, in the midst of the community, and to use cinema as an opportunity to connect and communicate with others, including through the popularization of social causes to which the festival donates, as it does every year, the proceeds from ticket sales.”, Cristian Mungiu, director of AIFF
More details about the festival programme will be announced soon and will be published on www.filmedefestival.ro
Film synopses
Richard Linklater, one of the most important contemporary American directors, is known to audiences for his Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) series, among others, and for the ambitious 12-year film project Boyhood (2014). In HIT MAN, a luminous neo noir, Glen Powell, an actor best known for blockbusters, plays Gary Johnson, who leads a double life as a teacher and fake hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. With an uncanny ability to get under the skin of different characters and personalities, Gary finds himself drawn to one of the potential killers he has to catch, Madison, played by Adria Arjona (True Detective 4). As Madison falls in love with one of Gary’s killer identities – the mysterious Ron – their affair sets off a chain reaction of role-playing, deception and escalating stakes. Co-written by Linklater and Powell and inspired by an incredible true story, HIT MAN is a smart existential comedy about identity that premiered at Venice and was in the Sundance selection. HIT MAN is distributed in Eastern Europe by Prorom.
KINDS OF KINDNESS, in competition at Cannes this year, is a trippy contemporary fable, with which one of the most exciting directors of the moment, Yorgos Lanthimos, returns less than a year after the resounding success of his Poor Things. In Kinds of Kindness, three seemingly separate stories are intrinsically linked: that of a man with no options trying to take control of his own life, a policeman worried that his wife, who had gone missing at sea, has returned and seems an entirely different person, and a woman determined to find someone destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader. The film has a stellar cast: Emma Stone, who just picked up an Oscar for Poor Things, Jesse Plemons (Other People, The Power of the Dog), Willem Dafoe (Poor Things, The Lighthouse, The Florida Project) and Margaret Qualley (Poor Things, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Maid series), with each of the actors playing multiple roles in the film. Kinds of Kindness is distributed in Romania by Forum Film Romania and will be released in cinemas on 13 September 2024.
Related to Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, AIFF is a festival dedicated to North American independent films outside Hollywood conventions. The project has presented in Romania, during its seven editions so far, a selection of the most recent independent productions made in the USA, critically acclaimed and selected in the circuit of major North American festivals such as Sundance, New York, Tribeca, Telluride or Toronto or at major festivals such as Berlin, Venice or Cannes, and has had the honor of having international actors such as Joaquin Phoenix, Ethan Hawke, John C. Reilly, Sebastian Stan, Mary-Louise Parker and directors such as Roberto Minervini and Jacques Audiard, who accepted invitations to be present in Bucharest and share their professional and life experience with the public. The festival also brokered live conversations between the Bucharest cinema-going public and some of the great directors of contemporary American cinema: Barry Jenkins, Sean Baker, Kent Jones, Paul Schrader, Benh Zeitlin and Steven Spielberg.
Organised by the Cinemascop Association, AIFF 8 is a cultural project funded by the Ministry of Culture.
With the support of: Banca Transilvania, Pepsi, Romanian Cultural Institute
Partners: Bran Castle, Bran Estate Management Company, French Institute of Romania, Elvire Popesco Cinema, Peasant Museum Cinema, Europa Cinemas, Eventbook.
Local partner: KunSTadt Cultural Association
Main media partner: PRO TV
Media partners: Agerpres, Libertatea, ELLE Romania, Scena9, Revista Biz, Haute Culture Magazine, Zile și Nopți, IQads, Igloo, Cultura la Dubă, Films in Frame, Observator Cultural, Cinemagia, Cinefan, Cinefilia, Cine Ghid
Monitoring partner: MediaTrust