The seventh Transilvania International Film Festival opens Friday in Cluj, Romania, with a screening of Michael Haneke's new US remake of his 1997 Austrian hit Funny Games.

Catherine Deneuve will receive a lifetime achievement award at this year festival, which will close June 8 with a gala awards ceremony and a screening of Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream.

The 12 titles in the feature competition include several films which have already established themselves internationally.

Omar Shargawi's revenge thriller Go In Peace Jamil won a Tiger Award at Rotterdam. TrustNordisk has been enjoying strong sales of the film, about an Arab man in Copenhagen who has to settle old debts.

Chilean director Jose Luis's debut feature, The Sky, The Earth And The Rain, won a FIPRESCI prize at Rotterdam. Memento Films presented the title at Berlin's EFM.

Yulene Olaizola's Intimacies of Shakespeare And Victor Hugo, the Mexican director's first feature, which was named Best Film at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema.

Two competition titles saw their international premieres at Venice: Critics Week selection Karoy, a dramatic comedy directed, by Zhanna Issabayeva, about a pathological liar from Kazakhstan; and Horizon's winner Autumn Ball, from Estonian director Veiko Ounpuu.

Two other titles are hot off the Cannes market: German director Niels Laupert's debut feature Seven Days Sunday (sold by M-Appeal), based on a true story of two teenagers who commit murder for a bet, and I Always Wanted To Be A Gangster (sold by Wild Bunch), from French director Samuel Benchetrit.

Also competing are Kalandorok, which earned director Bela Paczolay an award for Best Debut Film at Hungarian Film Week, and US director Anna Biller's Moscow competition title Viva, about desperate housewives during the sexual revolution.

The Romanian Days selection will screen eight features, including Radu Muntean Director's Fortnight title Boogie. Three films in Romanian Days are world premieres: Anca Damian's Crossing Dates, Igor Cobileanski's Tache, Radu Gabrea's Gruber's Journey, and Peter Strickland's Katalin Varga. Among the documentaries screening in sidebar is Alexandru Solomon's Cold Waves, about the role Free Europe Radio played during the Ceausescu regime.

Seven Romanian directors - Nae Caranfil, Tudor Giurgiu, Bogdan Mustata, Radu Muntean, Paul Negoescu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Adrian Sitaru - have created seven versions of this year's festival trailer, each a local send-up of James Bond films.

International feature competition
Viva (US, dir. Anna Biller)
La Zona (Spain, dir. Rodrigo Pla)
Autumn Ball (Estonia, dir. Veiko Ounpuu)
Seven Days Sunday (Germany, dir. Niels Laupert)
I Always Wanted To Be A Gangster (France, dir. Samuel Benchetrit)
Karoy (Kazakhstan, dir. Zhanna Issabayeva)
Kalandorok (Hungary, dir. Bela Paczolay)
El cielo, la tierra y la lluvia (France, Chile; dir. Jose Luis Torres Leiva)
Go In Peace Jamil (Denmark, dir. Omar Shargawi)
Intimidades de Shakespeare y Victor Hugo (Mexico, dir. Yulene Olaizola)

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