Astra Film Festival 2016: “The Manakia Brothers. Diary of a Long Look Back”
by Andra Petrescu, Dana Medar
The Manakia Brothers. Diary of a Long Look Back, directed by Eliza Zdru, was presented at the Astra Film Festival in Sibiu, in the section dedicated to the documentaries about Aromanians. The Manakia Brothers…, a reflexive documentary, is structured around the journey that the director took, in her attempt to recompose - from one place to another, from one interview to another – the story of the two brothers and the history of their photographs and films. The film uses archive footage (photos and films that the two brothers made), interviews with specialists or with people who knew them; all of them are mixed around the director`s pretext: she has a photo of her grandparents that seem to have been taken by Milton and IanakiManakia.
At Astra we met Eliza Zdru and Letiția Ștefănescu, the film editor, who spoke about the decision of following the story through Eliza`s journey, about the narrative use of the archive and about what they discovered watching brothers Manakia`s films.
The screening of the film was followed by a q&a with the filmmakers, moderated by Vintilă Mihăilescu.
Cinematography: Valeriu Ciubotaru