Carlos Saiz’s debut feature Lionel won the €10,000 Transilvania Trophy at the 2026 edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF)
Carlos Saiz’s debut feature Lionel won the €10,000 Transilvania Trophy at the 2026 edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF).
The Spanish-French co-production, which world premiered at Valladolid last November, is the third film by a Spanish filmmaker to win TIFF’s top honour after Miguel Cohan’s Sin Retorno in 2011 and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Stockholm in 2014. The film follows a adolescent man who embarks on a journey with his father, attempting to repair a relationship marked by years of absence and misunderstanding.
The best director award, with a €3,500 prize, went to Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani for Titanic Ocean, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard last month.
The special jury prize was won by Serbia’s Goran Stanković for Our Father, while the best performance award was presented to the acting ensemble of Muriel d’Ansembourg’s Truly Naked, which also received the prize of the Ecumenical jury.
The award in the What’s Up, Doc? competition for films that play with the conventions of documentary cinema was won by Vladlena Sandu’s Memory, with a special mention given to the South African co-directors Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar for Variations On A Theme.
Actress Maria Popistașu and Alex Baciu’s debut feature Y won the best feature award in TIFF’s Romanian Days competition, while the Romanian Days debut award went to Cristian Bota’s Back And Forth, with a special mention for actor-screenwriter Valeriu Andriuță’s directorial debut The Circle.
Meanwhile, TIFF festivalgoers voted for Hungarian filmmaker Gábor Holtai’s Feels Like Home to receive this year’s audience award. The Vodafone Hearts award for the most popular Romanian film screening at the festival went to Dan Dinu for his documentary Wild Delta about Europe’s largest wetland where the Carpathians meet the Black Sea.
In addition, the Fipresci prize for a film in the Romanian Days Competition went to Don’t Let Me Die by Andrei Epure, while the Young Francophone jury picked Vincent Mael Cardona’s Le Roi Soleil as its winning film.
The awards ceremony saw this year’s lifetime achievement award going to Italy’s Ornella Muti and the excellence award to the veteran Romanian actress Anda Onesa, while director Corneliu Porumboiu – the subject of this year’s Retrospective – was presented with a special award to mark TIFF’s 25th anniversary.
Polish festival founder-distributor-exhibitor Roman Gutek became the first recipient of the Janovics Jenö Award in recognition of his work reflecting a pioneering spirit, bold vision and a drive to open novel paths within the film industry.
At the beginning of the ceremony in the National Theatre and Opera, festival president Tudor Giurgiu introduced a miniature video in tribute to the behind schedule Edna Fainaru, a longtime correspondent for Screen International and one of TIFF’s long-standing supporters, and special mention of the Uruguayan producer Agustina Chiarino, who had been a member of the main competition in 2025 and died aged 49 on June 18.
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