Winner of two prizes at the 2010 Berlinale, Florin Serban's If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle has received a record number of nominations, 13, for the Gopo Awards, Romania's film industry honours.

It will vie for Best Film along with The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, Tuesday, After Christmas, Medal of Honor and Morgen.

EAST EUROPEAN FILM ALLIANCE, a consortium of Eastern European film organizations with the financial support of the MEDIA MUNDUS launch its training program „EEFA Training Network 2011" to be held during this year.
The EEFA Consortium is coordinated by the RFS (Romanian Film Sector, Romania). 

Catalin Mitulescu (The Way I Spent the End of the World) has started shooting on his second feature, Loverboy.

Formerly known as A Heart-Shaped Balloon, the film is a social drama about sex trafficking and stars young actors George Pistereanu and Ada Condeescu, both famous for their turns as the unwilling couple of Forin Serban's If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle, winner of two prizes at this years Berlinale.

Fifteen features, five of which are debut films, have received production funding from the Romanian Film Centre.
The largest production grant (€400,000) went to Libra Film's Despre oameni si melci ("Of Men and Snails").
The second largest production grant went to MediaPro and the controversial filmmaker Sergiu Nicolaescu.  

Cinema City, the largest operator of multiplex cinemas in Central and Eastern Europe and Israel, plans to open up to 24 new screens in Romania in the near future.  

Fifteen features, five of which are debut films, have received production funding from the Romanian Film Centre.
The largest production grant (€400,000) went to Libra Film's Despre oameni si melci ("Of Men and Snails").  

Two Romanian debut features - Palme d'Or winner Marian Crisan's Morgen and Bogdan George Apetri's Periferic ("Outskirts") - will compete in the international competition of the 2010 Locarno International Film Festival (August 4-14), the films' producers told Cineuropa. 

Screening in Romanian Days, the traditional domestic showcase of the Transylvania International Film Festival in Cluj-Napoca (May 28-June 6), Hello! How Are You? won't win any of the section's awards, but has a great chance of pleasing audiences domestically and abroad.

At its 119th meeting, held from June 14-17 in Hambourg, the Board of Management for the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund granted a total of €4,780,000 in co-production funding for 14 features films.
Eurimages is the support fund for co-production, distribution and exhibition of European cinematic works, set up by the Council of Europe in 1988.

An 18-year-old about to be released from a juvenile detention center is pushed over the limit when his deadbeat mom reappears in Florin Serban's strong debut "If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle." 

"Whistle" is the kind of solid, engrossing small-scale pic that fest auds should appreciate, offering possibilities for a limited arthouse run. 

Romania broke all its records in 2009.

Revenue from the film industry rose by 43% compared to 2008, and box office takings went up by 60%.

The popularity of 3D films and the growth in multiplexes are the main factors in Romania's increased film industry and box office in 2009.  

Barcelona-based director and producer Antoni Sole is set to shoot the horror film Web Cam in 3D with Michael Madsen, Robert Englund and Estella Warren attached to star.

The film will be a co-production between Sole's own outfit ABS Film Company, Canada's Caramel Film and Media Pro in Romania.

The French actress Fanny Ardant will be present at Studio Cinema in Bucharest, for the opening of the 13th edition of the French Film Festival (November 26-December 3), when the France-Romania-Portugal co-production "Cendres et sang" [Ash and blood], the debut of the famous actress as director, will be projected. 

At the Seville European Film Festival the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announced the nominations for the 22nd European Film Awards.

At the same time, the new EFA-website with lots of information about the Awards went online at www.europeanfilmawards.eu. 

To come to terms with the past. One's own. Radu Mihaileanu, Romanian (who fled to France in 1980 to escape the Ceausescu regime) and Jewish, is not one to renounce this filmmaker's privilege, and after Train of Life and Go, See, and Become, with The Concert he now turns his gaze on the brutal communist dictatorship and its habit of stripping you of everything you have, with no advance warning: your job, your children, the life you knew.

The Granddaughter of the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini has blocked the release of a film which has received critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival because a character in it refers to her as the "Mussolini whore" who wants all Romanians to be killed.
 

East European cinema.

Can any other three words create as much dread or indifference in the minds of most filmgoers?

To many of the uninitiated, east European films, like the countries from whence they come, conjure up nothing but doom and gloom.

Radu Muntean ("Boogie," "The Paper Will Be Blue"), one of the leading lights of Romania's new wave, has drawn down Euros 250,000 ($350,000) from ad agency giants McCann Erickson and Optimedia to make his fourth feature "Tuesday, After Christmas."
 

After a 20-film run, Festival de Cannes' Un Certain Regard program wrapped Saturday night with Corneliu Porumboiu's "Police, Adjective" taking the top jury prize. 

Romanian screenplay writer Ioan Antoci received the ‘Krzystof Kieslowski' ScripTeast award Wednesday, in a ceremony held at Plages des Palmes, during the Cannes Festival (May 13-24).

ScripTeast is a training program organized by the Independent Film Foundation  

Six Eastern European film associations, supported by the MEDIA INTERNATIONAL Preparatory Action of the European Union and the Romanian Film Centre, will team up for the first edition of the TrainEastFilm training program.
 

‘The Happiest Girl in the World’, the long-feature debut of director Radu Jude, will be presented at the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF), in Cluj-Napoca, May 29 – June 7 as a special film showing for the visually impaired. The projection is a joint effort by festival organizers and the ‘Travelling Book’ Foundation to bridge the gap between cinematography and the large community of film lovers from among the blind. 

The film "Memories of the Golden Age," produced by Cristian Mungiu and co-directed by Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu and Constantin Popescu, will start the eighth edition of the Transylvanian International Film Festival (TIFF), due to take place at the Republica Cinema Theatre, on May 29. 

The film "And the Rest Is Silence" by Nae Caranfil was selected the best long film at the third edition of the Gopo Awards Ceremony that took place on Monday evening at the Fratelli Studio in Bucharest.

Anamaria Marinca won the award for the Best Actress in a Lead Role for her character Smaranda in the film "Boogie.

Hosted by a new location, the Fratelli Studio, the Gopo Awards Ceremony will reveal today, on March 2, 2009, the top Romanian filmmakers of the year 2008.

Some of the awards of the forthcoming edition were already published and discussed. Lifetime achievement awards will go to director Elisabeta Bostan and actor Marin Moraru. 

The nominees for the third edition of the annual Gopo Awards, Romania’s top film honours, were revealed on Monday.
The Rest is Silence, Nae Caranfil’s epic movie depicting the making of the first Romanian feature film (Grigore Brezeanu’s The Independence of Romania of 1911), is in pole position with 13 nominations.

The usual panorama of the Italian film from Mons (given the big number of persons native in the Peninsula and settled in the neighbourhood, in the region of Hainaut) was expected to include also a last moment selection.

Among the six titles chosen for the 25th edition of the International Festival of the Love Film is also "Mar Nero. 

Barry Levinson has signed on to helm a $35 million feature version of Anatoly Kuznetsov's WWII classic "Babi Yar."

Novel is the author's harrowing account of witnessing mass executions of Jews, gypsies, Poles and prisoners of war during the German occupation of Kiev.

Project likely will shoot in the Ukraine and Romania, with pre-production starting in April.

The European Commission's MEDIA International initiative has more than doubled its budget for 2009, is encouraging new approaches to distribution and will expand to include projects designed to reach new audiences.

Aviva Silver, head of the MEDIA Unit, explained that five activities would be supported in 2009 with a significantly increased budget of $6.5m (Euros 5m) from the first year's $2.6m (Euros 2m).

Following a public consultation, the European Commission has officially prolonged current state aid assessment criteria for cinema in Europe until 31 December 2012

The Commission uses the criteria to approve Europe 's national, regional and local film support schemes under the EU's state aid rules.