Venice Award Winner ‘I Matter’ Named Mid-Fest Film at IFFI

The mid-point of this year's festival in Goa will be marked by a European film with an award already to its name. On 14 November 2026 the organisers of the 57th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) announced that ‘I Matter’, known in the original as ‘Eu Contez’, will have its Indian premiere as the mid-fest film of the festival. The drama is written and directed by Alina Serban and runs to 101 minutes.

The film

‘I Matter’ is a co-production of Romania, Germany and Belgium, with dialogue in Romanian and Romani. It follows Rebeca, a young Roma woman about to leave the orphanage that has been her home. Her father is due out of prison, her admission to university to study acting gives her a way forward, and the two together raise the hope of a family and a future of her own making. As she finds her feet in an unfamiliar world, unfinished business from her past returns and forces hard choices on her. Through that journey the film takes up social inclusion, dignity and individual freedom.

The award and the director

The film premiered in the Venice Spotlight section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in September 2026, where it won the Armani Beauty Audience Award. It is the feature-directorial debut of Alina Serban, an actress and playwright who graduated from the National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest and trained further at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Her earlier work includes ‘Alone at My Wedding’, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and ‘Gipsy Queen’, for which she won several best actress honours; she also appeared in ‘Housekeeping for Beginners’, screened at Venice. Denisa Farcas plays Rebeca.

When it screens

The mid-fest presentation is to be screened simultaneously at 4:30 pm on 24 November 2026 at PVR INOX Panjim and PVR INOX Porvorim, both in Audi 1. The director and the lead actress will attend the festival as special guests, and a red-carpet event is planned at PVR INOX Panjim on the day of the screening.

The festival around it

The 57th IFFI runs from 20 to 28 November 2026 at venues across Goa and will show over 150 international films from 86 countries in competitive and non-competitive sections, curated packages, retrospectives and tributes. The mid-fest film is the title placed at the centre of that programme, which is why its name, its director and its Venice award are worth memorising.