Academy Award Qualifying Festival!

Thrilled to announce that THE MAGICIAN has been selected to compete at the 2026 RiverRun International Film Festival, which takes place April 17-25 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

This European co-production has been selected for almost twenty festivals that serve as a springboard to the Oscars.

The screening will be at the spectacular UNCSA / Babcock Theatre.

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 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.

THE MAGICIAN, also known as MAGICIANUL, had its world premiere at the renowned Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, to great acclaim.

Since then, it has garnered countless selections at the world’s most prestigious film festivals, including numerous festivals that serve as qualifiers for the Hollywood Oscars and the EFA European Film Awards.

Bogdan Muresanu is a Romanian filmmaker who also enjoyed success with his previous short film CADOUL DE CRACIUN, winning the European Film Academy Award and being a FINALIST at the Oscars.

His feature film ‘The New Year That Never Came’ was recently released and has won numerous awards at international film festivals around the world.

For example, at the Venice International Film Festival.

THE MAGICIAN is a co-production between Romania, Croatia and France.

Stay tuned, because in a few days’ time we’ll be announcing further releases from this European hit, which has received unanimous praise on the film festival circuit.