The Astra Film Festival in Sibiu, which will take place on October 9-16, presents a selection of the newest and most valuable Romanian documentaries of the moment. A total of 17 non-fiction films about real Romania will be shown, 14 of which will be shown for the first time in Romania, in Sibiu. All of them make up the puzzle of Romanian society. Screenings will be held in the presence of the authors of the film, who will engage in dialogue with the audience.

After the 29th edition of #AFF, some films will be available to watch online in Romania and Astra Film organizers will be able to directly nominate the winning films for the European Film Awards.

“This autumn release will be a true festival in every bright sense of the word, if you take into account the fact that most of the films in the official series are premieres and show content that has not been seen before on the big screen. These are poorly financed productions that have been in the works for years, which means an additional argument that we are talking about films with relevant, valuable content. And when Romanian films created in Sibiu are released in the “laboratories” of the festival, their success is a celebration for the entire Romanian cinematographic community,” said Dumitru Budrala, Astra Film Festival’s founding director.

community

#AFF2022, the opening film “Chasha. About Sons and Daughters” by Catalina Tesar and Dana Bunescu (2022 – national premiere) for the first time in cinema reveals the interesting world of brokers. The film shows the world of this traditional Roma community from Transylvania, exploring the ancient customs marked by marriage by agreement, at the center of which is symbolically a golden bowl passed down from generation to generation.The film was conceived a few years ago as part of Astra Film’s DokTank lab program, and to document it, Cătălina Tesăr, a PhD in anthropology at University College London, conducted two years among the corators, during which she learned the language and CUSTOMS.

Communities and traditions are also discussed in two other films. “Community Memories: Georgeni and Frumoasa” by Armine Vosganian (2022 – international premiere) tells the story of 100-year-old Peter, the only man from Frumoasa who still speaks Armenian and knows the customs of the elderly. For her part, Alexandra Gulea makes a deep foray into the community of Aromanians in their historical exile, between the mountains and the sea (“Flying Sheep”, co-production Romania, Germany, 2022 – international premiere, Section of Central and Eastern Europe).

Writer Adina Popescu and director Iulian Gervase bring to Sibiu for its international premiere a documentary that uses the story of a football team that has been in the lower league for decades to explore how a rural community in the middle of Transylvania, a prisoner in an anonymous the world (“Vulturii din Șaga”, 2021).

Communism and post-communism

And this year, documentary filmmakers explore the impact of the communist regime on the lives of many generations, leaving deep wounds and fates to their own devices. Dragos Zamostianu – “In Search of Engineer Dragomirescu” (2022) – the story of a man who was sent to prison for singing “Wake up, Romanians!” and The Spring Breeze, from which he never returned. In The Back Door to Socialism (2022), László Chibi describes communist censorship as perceived by members of the Hungarian media, political structures, and cultural figures who were active during the communist regime.

In “Globus” (co-production Romania-Poland, 2022 – world premiere), Clara Kleininger keenly observes how the trainers of the state circus “Globus” become acrobats and clowns after their animals are taken to the zoo. And in Dragos Hanciu’s Omul cu umbra (2021), we see how Georges, a bright technician at the UNATC photo lab, loses his job when digital photography takes precedence over analog photography.

One of the most surprising films of the year, Sebastián Mihailescu’s To Me You Are Ceaușescu (2022) is an experimental mix of documentary and feature films and will be presented in Sibiu as part of the Astra Film Junior programme. The film follows the reactions of young people aged between 15 and 22, from various backgrounds, who want to play the role of Nicolae Ceausescu at a time when the former communist dictator was very young.

Migration

Two Romanian films from the official selection are devoted to the phenomenon of migration. In Waves on Land (world premiere 2021), Raluca David filmed in Ecuador, the Republic of Moldova and Portugal the story of a young Moldovan surfer trying to overcome his immigrant status, while Arseniy’s First Birthday, dir. Valentyn-Raresh Fogorosh (2022 – world premiere, DocSchool section) tells the story of the struggle of a woman from Ukraine, a refugee in our country, who fights the bureaucracy to get EU documents for her son Arseniy.

destiny

One of the most emotional portraits to be presented at this edition of AFF is “Stuck in Your Own Movie” (2022 – world premiere, DocSchool section), in which Alexandru Oitse presents the fate of director Andrei Katalin Baleanu, the argument that life really surpasses movie. Another portrait, this time a collective one, is that of the people who are building the section of the Via Transilvanica – a road of more than 1,400 kilometers long, “which unites” (“Oamenii drumului: Terra Banatica”, Mircea Gerase, 2021).

Another road with deep meaning and cause for important questions is the journey made by a young woman during the Covid-19 restrictions to a 500-year-old place of pilgrimage: Șumuleu Ciuc / Csíksomlyó (“My home, my home”, Aniko Nagy, 2020 – national premiere). And Botonda Pusok’s Too Close (2022) is a tense story about a mother with two children and her anxiety when she has to accept a parental visit from the father of the second child after he is released from a penitentiary where he was imprisoned for , what he did with the woman’s first child.

One of the films in the official DocSchool selection is looking for an answer to the difficult question “What happens after death?”. (“One click away”, Janine Gruen (2022 – world premiere) and young viewers of AF Junior will see the adventures of children at a camp in the Danube Delta, who discover two poachers who are fishing illegally (“Strajerii Deltai”, Liviu Margidan , 2022).The #AFF2022 Official Selection also presents Robert Arpad Lakatos’ amazing satirical documentary essay Whose Dog Is This (2022 – Romanian premiere), which shows big politics as a world where the citizens are dogs and the politicians are dog breeders.

About Astra Film Festival

Astra Film Festival Sibiu, launched in 1993 as an innovative project, is one of the most important non-fiction film festivals in Europe, included by the European Film Academy in the list of festivals that have the right to make direct nominations for European Film. Awards

Astra Film Festival is held under the high patronage of the President of Romania and organized by Astra Film, CNM Astra and Astra Film Foundation with the support of the Sibiu County Council, the Ministry of Culture, the National Center of Cinematography, the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in Sibiu and the Union of Cinematographers. The event is co-financed by the City Council of Sibiu through the City Hall of Sibiu and the European Union through the Creative Europe program.