The Transilvania International Film Festival announces a partnership with Film Independent, the Los Angeles-based organization behind the Film Independent Spirit Awards and numerous other initiatives supporting and championing independent filmmaking. As part of this collaboration, Film Independent will present Always Remember in Transilvania, a series of free screenings supported by the Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), created to raise Holocaust awareness through powerful and accessible storytelling.
During the 25th edition of Transilvania IFF, taking place June 12–21, 2026, two films selected by Film Independent will be screened at Cinema Victoria in Cluj-Napoca: Pepi Fandango (dir. Lucija Stojević, Spain, 2024) and Orphan (Orfan, dir. László Nemes, Hungary, 2025). Admission is free to the public.
A Film Independent delegation will be in Cluj-Napoca during the festival and the program will also be presented at TIFF Timişoara in the autumn.
Pepi Fandango is a 2023 Spanish documentary directed by Lucija Stojević, following the moving story of Peter Perez (nicknamed “Pepi”), a Viennese Holocaust survivor, and his musician friend Alfred Pahola, as they embark on a road trip together from Vienna to southern Spain. Pepi’s goal is to compose a fandango — a flamenco-style song that has haunted him since childhood: as a boy, he and his Jewish family were interned at the Rivesaltes concentration camp in France, where he was housed in the same barracks as Spanish Roma children who sang fandangos to communicate with their parents on the other side of the dividing wall. The film has screened at festivals including the Warsaw Film Festival, Crossing Europe (Linz), DocsBarcelona and Dokumentale Berlin, and earned a Special Mention at the Festival de Málaga, the Panorama Award at DocsValència and the Audience Award at Memorimage.