The European Film Academy Welcomes Producer Daria Trifu as a New Member

The high accolade was announced on May 9 in the Academy’s official press release. Daria Trifu, besides being an acclaimed film producer, is the president of Global Film Studio, the founder of the Global Nonviolent Film Festival, and of the VOD streaming channel Global Cinema Online.

By Bruno Pischiutta

I met Daria Trifu for the first time in the spring of 2000, when she came to my office in Toronto and asked to participate in the International Film Workshop that I then rarely held for a small group of students. 

Daria had recently emigrated to Canada with her family and wanted to enter the North American film industry. I had the opportunity to meet and interview her. I realized that the artistic education she had had at the art lyceum in her native Romania was an excellent cultural basis for her and that I was dealing with an exceptional person with great talent and possibilities. Without a doubt, I admitted her to my workshop. In a few months, she graduated with flying colors, started working for my company, and thus began her professional career in film.

I tried from the beginning to further develop her education and give her the necessary experience. Daria became my close collaborator and participated in my meetings with actors, lawyers, accountants, and marketers. We traveled extensively across Canada, Europe, and the United States. Daria organized the company’s participation in numerous film festivals, such as Cannes, Monte Carlo, Montreal, Las Vegas, New York, and Los Angeles.

After gaining this extensive experience in marketing, Daria produced with me the feature film Punctured Hope in Africa with a budget of $5.8 million. This film debuted in Ghana and in Hollywood, had limited distribution in the US, qualified for nomination consideration at the Academy Awards, won recognition and acclaim at the Montreal Film Festival, and was nominated by the Political Film Society in Hollywood as the Best Film Exposé and Best Film on Human Rights. Daria also produced the feature documentary, Brasov, Probably the Best City in the World, that was successfully screened in Romania and in Cuba.

Then Daria, herself, took the company public, and, in less than a month, the company’s market value went from $500,000 to $140,000,000. At the same time, she founded DARIA!, an arts, entertainment, and business magazine that was distributed at major film festivals around the world and continues to be published online to this day.

Daria, together with me, founded the Global Nonviolent Film Festival, which is the most important and renown non-violent film festival in the world and has been broadcasting selected films for 11 days a year since 2012.

In 2021, she founded the VOD channel GlobalCinema.online, which today streams more than 280 films, documentaries, and series that do not contain gratuitous violence.

These are, so far, the most important achievements of Daria Trifu’s career. This year, Daria will produce, The Trilogy, that comprises three feature films, and one feature documentary. The Trilogy will see Daria make her debut as an actress and director: for the first time for her, she will direct the documentary The Making of The Trilogy, and she will play a part in one of the three motion pictures that I am directing.

My warmest congratulations to Daria for her whole career and for becoming a member of the European Film Academy!