Three stage adaptations of famous films will be featured at the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj during the 17^th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF).

Illegitimate, the stage version of director Adrian Sitaru’s film with the same title, will take place on Friday, June 1, at 8 pm, at the Studio Hall of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. By using the technology of virtual reality, the production sheds light on our blindness, and inevitable ignorance, due to the way we perceive things differently and in a deformed way. We go through life wearing invisible goggles, blinkers or colored glasses, we only see what we want and it becomes convenient for us to only notice what we have learnt to see. We are turning around and around, in a circle, repetitively, and live parallel realities in our minds. The only question is whether we have the opportunity to rise above it all?

The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj celebrates the centennial of the birth of world-renowned filmmaker Ingmar Bergman with a rendition of Cries and Whispers, a performance that premiered in 2010 to great audience and critical acclaim. Directed by Andrei Şerban, the play tries to reveal how the creation of the film Cries and Whispers began. The creators of the production try to imagine how the fiction on stage turns into actual reality, to decipher the secret behind the collaborative work of one of the greatest directors that ever lived and four remarkable actresses. Four women constitute the nucleus of the story: Agnes, who is dying, her older sisters, Karin and Maria, who came to be with her, and Anna, the maid. The whispers and cries of the title are theirs. The performance will take place on Saturday, June 2, at 8 pm, at the theatre’s Studio Hall.

The theatrical version of Breaking the Waves, based on the film of the same title featuring Emily Watson, will be presented on Sunday, June 3, at 8 pm, in the Studio Hall of the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj. “Set in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands, Lars von Trier’s 1996 cult film, Breaking the Waves, shocked the film world. Its stark landscapes and naked aesthetics offered no answers, only questions. Why do we turn our backs on the weakest? When does conformity become suffocation? And wouldn’t you say that faith is a feeling, not just a word?” asks the play’s director, Tom Dugdale.