The 28th edition of the Astra Film Festival, Romania’s longest-running gathering dedicated exclusively to documentary cinema, will kick off on 5 September (running until the 12^th) and will screen more than 50 films over eight days. Given the current health context, the organisers have opted to move the festival from its traditional mid-October slot to the beginning of September, as this edition will be hybrid, with outdoor and indoor screenings as well as online access to films.

This edition will have four competitions, the main one being New Voices in Documentary Cinema, which focuses on first, second and third films in the career of a director. There will also be a Central & Eastern Europe Competition, the Romanian Competition and the Docschool Competition, the latter consisting exclusively of short films. The main theme of this iteration is “Climate Collapse Alert”, with several films, including the opening one, Emmanuel Cappellin’s Once You Know [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (France), exploring the effects of climate change.

Luca Lucchesi’s A Black Jesus [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Germany), Guido Hendrikx’s A Man and a Camera [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Netherlands), Frédéric Mainçon’s For Your Comfort and Your Safety (France), László Barna’s Hands of God (Hungary/Romania), Virginija Vareikyte and Maximilien Dejoie’s I'll Stand By You (Lithuania/Italy/Switzerland), Ensar Altay’s Kodokushi (Turkey), Moumouni Sanou’s Night Nursery [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Burkina Faso/France/Germany), and Marina Belobrovaja’s Our Child [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Switzerland) will be competing for the festival’s top award, the Astra Trophy.

Ten medium- and feature-length documentaries will be competing for the awards in the Central & Eastern Europe Competition: Ivo Briedis' Homo Sovieticus (Latvia/Lithuania/Czech Republic), Bruno Pavić's Landscape Zero [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Croatia), Michal Edelman's Last Knights of the Right Side (Poland), Ivana Marinić Kragić's Nun of Your Business (Croatia/Serbia), Marko Grba Singh's Rampart [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Serbia), Irena Stetsenko's Roses. Film-Cabaret [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Ukraine), Salomé Jashi's Taming the Garden [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Salomé Jashi
scheda film] (Switzerland/Georgia/Germany), Albert Solé's The Last Tape from Bosnia (Spain), Anna Savchenko's Where the World Ends (Belgium/Norway/Lithuania/Croatia) and Martin Páv's Wolves at the Borders [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Czech Republic).

Eight out of the ten films competing in the Romanian Competition are directed by women: Carmen Lidia Vidu's #New Together (Austria/Romania), Ioana Mischie's Fragile (Romania), Olga Lucovnicova's My Uncle Tudor (Belgium/Portugal/Hungary), Oana Giurgiu's Occasional Spies (Romania), Anca Hirte's Stela, In the Name of the Father (Romania), Raluca Durbacă's Certainty of Probabilities [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Romania), Ágnes Maksay's The Shawkat Mystery (Romania) and Andra Tarara's Us Against Us [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Romania). Rareş Ienasoaie's The Missing One (France) and Jacopo Marzi's Hymn from the Hive (Romania) will also be competing in the Romanian Competition.