The autumn film season starts with Astra Film Festival 2020. Six world premieres, a international one, nine national premieres, one film in the race for the nominations for the Oscars 2021, meetings with directors, essential questions, unexpected answers and special events completes the festival. The 27th edition of the Open Air Astra Film Festival 2020 starts in a week in Sibiu and it will stay in the viewers`memory for quite
a long time.
Astra Film Festival 2020 offers his viewers
6 world premieres („
Tamás Barta - Hurry, Mom’s Waiting at Home by Eszter Hajdu – Hungary-Portugal, 2020;
Half Elf by Jón Bjarki Magnússon, Iceland, 2020;
Burgan-I Did Not Breathe the Air for Nothing by Duco Tellegen, Netherlands- Romania, 2019
; All rivers flow into the sea and the sea never fills, by
Claudiu Mitcu, 2020, 2020;
Death...full stop or comma? by Călin Terțan, Corina Terțan – Romania, 2020;
Reflections in the East, by
Andreea Cristina Borţun, Romania 2020),
an international premiere,
Lost Kids on the Beach / Copii pierduți pe plajă, by
Alina Manolache- Romania, 2020 and
9 national premiers (
Forget Me Not by Sun Hee Engelstoft –Denmark, 2019;
Lessons of Love by Malgorzata Goliszewska and Kasia Mateja- Poland, 2019;
Talking About Adultery by Bára Jíchová Tyson – USA-Czech Republic;
The World According to Amazon, by Adrien Pinon and Thomas Lafarge – France-Germany-India-Poland-USA, 2019;
Caught in the Net by Vít Klusák, Barbora Chalupová – Czech Republic – Slovakia, 2020;
Self Portrait by Katja Høgset, Margreth Olin and Espen Wallin – Norway, 2020;
Songs of Repression by Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner – Denmark, 2020;
Holy Father by Andrei Diaconescu – Romania, 2020;
iHuman by Tonje Hessen Schei – Norway, 2019 ).
Acasă, My Home,the debut feature film of director
Radu Ciorniciuc, awarded at Sundance, Munich, Thessaloniki, Krakow, Macedonia and in the race for an EFA Award nomination, can be seen at # AFF2020. The film is running for an Oscar nomination at 2021 Oscars, and in 2018 received the Best Project Award at the DocumentaryTank at Astra Film Festival 2018.
The screening program is available on the festival website
astrafilm.ro/program-2020/, and the tickets can be purchased online starting today, August 28, on the festival website
astrafilm.ro/bilete-la-astra-film-festival-2020/ and on
eventbook.ro/festival/astra-film-festival.
As usual, the films proposed by Astra Film Festival challenge viewers to ask themselves essential questions and find unexpected answers.
The production
Caught in the Net (by BarboraChalupová, VítKlusák) is a foray into the dark world of online pedophiles, and in
The Conflagration of Social Networks (David FontsecaRomanos) we try to find out how much civic mobilization depends on social networks?
Please Hold the Line / Așteptațirăspunsuloperatorului,
Pavel Cuzuioc's film, asks a question that talks about a reality that we may not perceive enough: with so many communication tools, aren't we trapped in a modern Tower of Babel? And the thrilling conclusion comes from
iHuman (Tonje Hessen Schei): first we create technology, then technology recreates us.
A famous photographer suffers from severe anorexia and explores this deadly disease in images (
Self Portraitby Espen Wallin, Katja Høgset and Margreth Olin) and Jola escapes from a nightmare marriage and struggles to reinvent herself at 69 years-old (
Lessons of Love by Malgorzata Goliszewska and Kasia Mateja). Maybe adultery is boring or maybe not, but betrayal is definitely interesting, isn't it? (
Talking About Adultery by Bára Jíchová Tyson).
In
Songs of Repression by Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner, survivors of a Chilean sect commemorate 45 years of abuse and life on the brink of slavery, and at the age of 100, a lighthouse keeper prepares his funeral in
Half Elf, by Jón Bjarki Magnússon.
The rock band Locomotiv GT
bassist's emotional story, who fled to America from communist Hungary, is reconstructed from audio tapes (
Tamás Barta - Hurry, Mom’s Waiting at Home by Eszter Hajdu). And last but not least, the many years investigation into the Amazon phenomenon, the largest corporation in the world of the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, with a fortune of 200 billion dollars, led to the creation of the film
The World According to Amazon (Adrien Pinon and Thomas Lafarge), also a national premiere in Sibiu.
In 1968, László, a 14-year-old boy, violated the rules of the communist system, and the punishment would be exemplary (
Stigmatized 1968, by Ágota Varga). In turn, Marek Edelman, leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943, recalls love stories from the ghetto (
Marek Edelman ...And There Was Love in The Ghetto by Jolanta Dylewska). In
Family Secrets by Susanne Kovács we see a story about the shadows of the past, which never leave us, and in
Forget Me Not (Sun Hee Engelstoft) we try to understand what causes a mother to give her child up for adoption.
RETRO AFF is a section that resumes five titles projected in previous editions of the festival, offering a brief image of the variety of documentary cinema from the Astra Film Festival brand selections.
In
Story of Fatat, by Ibrahim Harb, a strong woman defies her destiny and does not let herself be defeated, in
Happily Ever After (Tatjana Božic), a director visits her five ex-boyfriends to find out why all her love stories ended badly and the Romanian ClaudiuCrulic goes on hunger strike in a prison in Poland where he had been unjustly imprisoned (
Crulic - Drumulspredincolo / Crulic – The Path to Beyond, by Anca Dami
an). How should a song on the radio sound like to make you travel the whole world to discover its origin? (
Song from The Forest by Michael Obert). And what more fascinating story than the very way it is drawn through the mountains can, one of the most spectacular roads in the world, have? (
Drumulregilor–Transalpina / Transalpina – The Road of Kings, by
Dumitru Budrală).
FEMALE IDENTITIES IN THE ROMANIAN SOUTHERN RURAL is an image and sound exploration diary, which describes the universe of victorious women from Teleorman, one of the poorest counties in Romania. The photos, the video and sound installations bear witness to the intimate chronicles of women who gained their freedom through courage. Andreea Borțun and Brîndușa Nastasă documented the post-abuse life hypostases, presenting current stories of women from the current Romanian countryside, who have gained a fragile independence and survive in a society sill marked by a deeply patriarchal mentality. (Concept & director: Andreea Borțun, Photography: Claudiu Popescu and Brîndușa I. Nastasă, Curator: Ioana Ciocan).
In an open Europe, a Romanian is questioned about his ancestors and the specifics of his language, about Dracula, vampires and poverty. The paper
“Transylvania, the Magazine of an Ideal”, by MihaliNicoară, shows that the language and history of Romanians represent unique values of culture and civilization.
Gastro@ASTRA is an appetizing project, made in collaboration with the International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism, which brings to AFF 2020 the winning shortfilms from the Food Film Menu 2020 competition dedicated to the presentation of European Gastronomic Regions. This program is hosted due to Sibiu holding the title of European Gastronomy Region in 2019.
The AFF 2020 screenings and events will take place in 8 locations: Lake Scene, Country Fair, Between Windmills, Game Pavilion, Amphitheater and Old Houses (all inside Dumbrava Forest - Astra Museum), at the Flower Terrace - Cultural Center "Ion Besoiu" and in the Small Square in the historic center of Sibiu
Astra Film Festival 2020 PROMO
