Before the word “vampire” ever reached Western Europe and long before Bram Stoker turned Transylvania into a gothic legend, Romanians were already telling stories about the strigoi — spirits that slipped between the worlds of the living and the dead. These were not imagined monsters from distant castles but familiar faces: neighbors, relatives, and townspeople whose souls could not find rest. In traditional belief, a strigoi was not born from evil so much as imbalance. It was

The Keeper of the Flame In every culture, there are keepers of the flame—those who carry the memory of a people across generations, adapting it to new languages, new screens, and new worlds. In Romania, one of those keepers is Corneliu Țepeluș, a filmmaker, storyteller, and cultural ambassador whose life has been shaped by the timeless human pursuit of immortality—not the kind that denies death, but the kind that ensures meaning endures. His work bridges the mystical and the