Thrilled to announce that THE MAGICIAN, by Bogdan Muresanu, has received a Director’s Choice Award for the 45th Annual Touring Season at Thomas Edison Film Festival, New Jersey, USA.

It is the umpteenth Academy Award® Qualifying Festival to select this magnificent short film produced between Romania, Croatia and France.

The Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium was founded in November 1987 as a 501c3. The Consortium is the parent company of the Thomas Edison Film Festival (TEFF). The mission of the Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium is to promote innovation in the art of the moving image. The artistic vision of the Consortium is inseparable from its mission. They expand public appreciation of short films as a compelling art form, by means of public exhibition, and are committed to shining a light on issues of global concern.

For over 40 years the Thomas Edison Film Festival (formerly known as the Black Maria Film Festival) has been celebrating and advancing the unique power of the short film. The Consortium embraces the mission of Thomas Edison Film Festival (TEFF) to promote innovation and advocate for independent filmmakers through a juried international competition celebrating all genres and hybrids from filmmakers around the world.

Innovation. Creativity. Vision. These principles defined Thomas Edison’s legacy, and they have guided its festival for over four decades.

Thomas Edison Film Festival has officially been recognized as an Academy Award® Qualifying Film Festival— the only festival in New Jersey to receive this prestigious honor. Inclusion on the Qualifying Festival List is a privilege offered to organizations that are considered outstanding by the Academy not only based on the films they select but also for their continued contributions and commitments to the global filmmaking community. For filmmakers, it opens a gateway to the Oscars®, as their winning shorts in our qualifying categories— animation and experimental—are now eligible for nomination. For audiences, it’s a guarantee that the stories we bring to the screen are among the best in the world.

THE MAGICIAN premiered worldwide this summer at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.

In just five months, it has been selected for 30 international festivals, including qualifying events for the Hollywood Oscars and the EFA European Film Awards.

Synopsis:

Sulina, 1910. It is the inauguration of the first electric power station in this Romanian port city. In the jubilation of a modern and cosmopolitan crowd, Ilarion, a prestidigitator from another time, tries to play his last card.

Director’s Statement:

“I wanted to revive a bygone world and the technique of animation allowed me to recreate, from stills, the settings in which the action of the movie takes place, but I also wanted to get to the essence of the story. And here I think animation was a medium that suited my intention: not to illustrate the glory of a bygone world, through the fate of a once exuberant and cosmopolitan port, now reduced to the dimensions of a forgotten small town, but to represent the substance of the story I wrote many years ago,” says Bogdan Mureșanu.
“Film, especially animated film, which is supposed to be a total visual invention, has to produce an image that, at best, then hangs on the walls of those ‘dark corridors’ in the viewer’s mind.”, adds the director.

Bogdan Muresanu achieved enormous success with his previous short film entitled CADOUL DE CRACIUN, which won the European Film Academy Award and was a FINALIST at the Hollywood Oscars.

In a few days, we will announce more good news about this successful short film. Stay tuned.

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