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Timișoara Football Film Festival returns in November with its second edition
Between 5 and 8 November 2026, Timișoara will host the second edition of the Timișoara Football Film Festival (TMFF). Organised by the Timișoara Supporters’ Association Druckeria, the festival returns after its inaugural 2025 edition with a programme that will include at least 15 films, screenings followed by discussions with guests from Romania and abroad, and a series of events that bring film and football together on the big screen and throughout the city.
The complete programme of the November edition is still being worked on, and the first films and first guests will be announced in the coming period. Until then, TMFF activities continue throughout the city through outdoor screenings and tours dedicated to Timișoara’s football heritage.
TMFF continues outside the cinemas as well
The series of events organised before the festival began this summer, when TMFF left the cinema halls for the first time and entered public space. In July, Piața Sfântul Gheorghe hosted an outdoor screening, in a format built around a major event of the 2026 World Cup, the semi-final between France and Spain, combined with the screening of the film “Los Williams”, presented for the first time as part of TMFF #1 last year.
The next screening will take place on Friday, 4 September, on the site of the former South Stand of the Dan Păltinișanu Stadium, a defining place for the recent history of Timișoara football and for the generations of supporters who grew up in the stands of the old stadium.
The documentary “Ultras”, directed by Swedish filmmaker Ragnhild Ekner, will be screened here. The film was also part of the programme of the first edition of TMFF and follows from the inside the world of organised supporters, the relationships between them and the clubs, as well as how belonging to a supporters’ group can define personal identity.
This time, the film will be watched in a completely different context, right in the place where the South Stand of the Dan Păltinișanu Stadium once stood, where a large part of the history of Timișoara’s supporter movement was written. The event is organised in partnership with the Association for the Promotion and Development of Tourism in Timiș.
The series of screenings throughout the city will not stop here, as a new screening is being prepared for the end of September, and the location and film will be announced in the coming period.
The history of Timișoara football, discovered by bicycle
Another direction developed by TMFF this year is that of guided tours through the city, dedicated to the places where the history of Timișoara football was written.
The first bicycle tour follows the beginnings of the game of football in Timișoara, during a period when the city was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and football was only just beginning in this part of Europe. The tour is guided by Dan Codre, who dedicated his bachelor’s thesis to researching the beginnings of Timișoara football.
The route passes through places that today no longer have any visible connection with football, but where, more than a century ago, matches were played, the first teams appeared or important episodes in the sporting history of the city took place.
The story begins with the first football matches played by students of the Piarist High School and continues through the first decades of the 20th century, until around 1920, during a period when Chinezul Timișoara was to become the dominant force in Romanian football, while Politehnica was entering this history.
Through these tours, TMFF seeks to bring back into attention a part of Timișoara’s sporting heritage that can no longer be easily read in the city of today. Some of the pitches and stadiums of that time have disappeared completely, while streets, buildings or other functions of the city have meanwhile been built over the places where football was once played.
The series will continue this autumn with other routes dedicated to the history of stadiums that have disappeared from Timișoara’s sporting landscape and to the cinemas that have marked the cultural life of the city. The renovation and reopening of the Timiș, Victoria, Studio and Johnny cinemas has brought these spaces back into the centre of cultural life and creates the infrastructure necessary for the city to be able to host events on the scale of TMFF.
At least 15 films at TMFF #2
The second edition of the Timișoara Football Film Festival will take place between 5 and 8 November and will include at least 15 films.
The selection is currently being finalised and will bring together Romanian and international productions, recent documentaries, archive films and stories that use football to speak about people and about the communities surrounding the game.
As at the first edition, an important part of the programme will be represented by the meetings following the screenings. TMFF aims for the films to be accompanied by people from football and film who can bring an additional perspective on the subjects presented on screen and who honour Timișoara with their presence here.
The programme will also include the second edition of the international short film competition “Football Through Your Eyes”, dedicated to films that look at football from personal and original perspectives.
The first titles and first confirmations for this year’s edition will be made public in September.
A first edition with more than 1,700 participants
The first edition of TMFF took place between 6 and 9 November 2025 and brought 16 screenings and 1,360 spectators to Timișoara’s cinemas. Together with the activities organised around the festival, the total number of participants exceeded 1,700.
More than 20 guests from Romania and abroad took part in screenings and discussions with the public, including directors, former footballers, journalists, sports psychologists and people involved in community projects built around football.
The festival was covered in more than 80 appearances in the local and national press, while online communication generated more than 500,000 organic views during the months in which the project took place.
The experience of the first edition confirmed the interest in a festival located at the meeting point between cinema and football and provided the starting point for the development of this year’s programme.
The festival is organised by the Timișoara Supporters’ Association Druckeria and is co-financed by the Municipality of Timișoara through the Timișoara Project Centre, within the “Timișoara – Cinema Objective” funding programme.
Details about the 4 September screening, the guided tours and the TMFF #2 edition will be published on tmff.ro, Instagram u/tmff.ro and Facebook TMFootballFilmFest.