Usually a seven-day event, the Astra Film Festival, Romania’s most prominent documentary gathering, will have a nine-day edition in 2025, hosted in the quaint city of Sibiu between 17 and 26 October. As many as 70 documentaries will be shown across five competitions and several thematic sections, ranging in themes from 'Masculinity in Crisis', 'When the Press Becomes a Fake News Factory', to 'Our Lives Online' and '#Westerners – A Critical View'.

“Documentaries remain a source of clarity and truth, and Astra is an occasion to come together to watch stories that matter, to reflect collectively and to equip ourselves with a deeper understanding of the world around us,” said the festival’s founding director Dumitru Budrala in a press release.

Nine first, second or third features will be vying for the Astra Trophy, the top award in the New Voices of Documentary Cinema Competition: Myrid Carten’s A Want in Her [+lire aussi :
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interview : Myrid Carten
fiche film] (Ireland/UK/Netherlands), Marcin Wierzchowski’s Das Deutsche Volk [+lire aussi :
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interview : Marcin Wierzchowski
fiche film] (Germany), Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte! [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Croatia/Italy/Slovenia), Aboozar Amini’s Kabul, Between Prayers [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Netherlands/Belgium), Aminatou Echard’s The Big Everything (France/Belgium), Carolina Campo Lupo’s The Fable of the Turtle and the Flower (Uruguay/Spain), David Bim’s To the West, in Zapata [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Cuba/Spain), Juanjo Pereira’s Under the Flag, the Sun [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Paraguay), and Farah Kassem’s We Are Inside [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Lebanon/Denmark/Qatar).

A further 11 films will be locking horns in the Central and Eastern European Competition: Ketevan Vashagashviili’s 9-Month Contract [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Georgia/Germany/Bulgaria), Margit Lillak’s Becoming Roosi (Estonia/Germany), Filip Remunda’s Happiness to All [+lire aussi :
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interview : Filip Remunda
fiche film] (Czech Republic/Netherlands/France), Arjun Talwar’s Letters from Wolf Street [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Poland/Germany), Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Théo [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Ukraine), Petra Seliškar’s The Mountain Won’t Move [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (France/Slovenia/Macedonia), David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Denmark/Czech Republic), Masha Chernaya’s The Shards [+lire aussi :
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interview : Masha Chernaya
fiche film] (Georgia/Germany), Dragoş Turea’s Ultimate Weapon (Moldova/Romania), and Alina Simone’s Black Snow (USA). 

Finally, ten films will be shown in the Romanian Competition, which is open not only to Romanian productions, but also to features exploring topics related to the country: Ágnes Maksay’s Wandering Through Mountains and Valleys, Singing (Hungary/Romania), Anca Hirte’s The Living Ones (Romania), Paula Onet’s Still Nia (Romania/France), Alexandra Gulea’s Miriam Răducanu – Rigor and Sense (Romania), Alexandru Mavrodineanu’s Love Hurts (Romania), Tom Heinemann’s Ikea Loves Wood (Denmark), Simona Constantin’s Caliu: Nothing Else, What Else Can I Do? (Romania), Andra MacMasters's Bright Future [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] (Romania/South Korea), Adina Sădeanu’s Anatomy of Ordinary Crimes (Romania), and Marian Voicu’s #savesorina (Romania/Spain). 

Beside the festival’s traditional short film competition, DocSchool, usually dedicated to directors graduating from various film schools around the world, Astra 2025 is debuting a second short film competition, DocShorts, open to all short films.