Tirana International Film Festival


The Tirana International Film Festival is one of the major annual events taking place in Tirana each year. It was the first international cinema festival in Albania. This cultural event was created in 2003 and is currently the most important cinematic event in Albania.
The Festival is competitive with the International Section jury awarding several prizes each year, most notably the "Golden Owl" for Best Feature Film.
It is organised annually by the Albanian National Center of Cinematography. It features three distinct categories and combines features and short film; fiction, documentary, animation and experimental. The festival is open to any filmmaker from around the world and it also accepts student works.

History

The festival was held for the first time in 2003. Since then it has been held annually in the cinemas of Tirana.
During the 12th edition more than 5,400 applications were submitted.
In 2015, the Festival introduced DocuTIFF, after large applications sent during the 12th edition of the Festival held in 2014. It was impossible to show all these production in one single festival and new festivals were created for each category such as DocuTIFF, for documentary film, AnimaTIFF, for animated productions and ExpoTIFF for experimental films.

Award Winners

The list of the Winners of the "Golden Owl award for each year is as follows:
YearEnglish titleOriginal titleDirectorCountry
2003The Last GunmanThe Last GunmanAlessandro DominiciITA
2004Family PortraitEllery NgiamSIN
2005Before I GoHeiko HahnGER
2006The OptimistsОптимистиGoran PaskaljevićSRB
2007SalvadorSalvadorManuel HuergaESP
2008Annem Sinema ÖgreniyorAnnem Sinema ÖgreniyorNesimi YetikGER
2009Woman without a pianoLa mujer sin PianoJavier RebolloESP
2010Woman in temptationZeny v pokuseniJiri VejdelekCZE
2011Punk's not deadPunk's not deadVladimir BlazevskiMKD
2012Siberia, MonamourSibir. MonamurSlava RossRUS
2013Seven Lucky Gods Seven Lucky GodsJamil DehlaviUK
2014TermitariaNuwebeJoseph Israel LabanPHI
2015BabaiBabaiVisar MorinaKOS
2016Hear the SilenceHöre die StilleEd EhrenbergGER
2017Glory''СлаваKristina Grozeva, Petar ValchanovBUL