Andrei Dăscălescu: Holy Father

This text is written by festival directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic

This is an exclusive road movie in search of answers hidden deep in silence and oblivion.

Andrei Dăscălescu is facing a situation that announces a major, important change in his life. Face to face with his worried wife, unprepared to directly express his own condition and emotions, he takes a camera that he uses more successfully than words and resolutely and bravely undertakes a great documentary endeavor. With his film skills, he tries to break through the invisible walls between the present, the past and the future, and sets out to meet his father, who has renounced the world and left the son in that renunciation. The journey takes us to spaces of deep devotion, to the Holy Mountain, and confronts us with long-buried secrets and conflicts. This is where the unusual friendship between the father, a monk crucified between his duties and family history, and the son begins. A camera helps him to behold and understand his own father and the rest of the world. This is a touching film quest for a father, but also for what it really means to be a father. And finally, a quest for how to become a father himself. This is a dramatic search for reconciliation and a story about the true courage of future parents ready to face the legacy they need to pass on to their child.

A film that enchants you with its warmth and intimacy, as well as with its amazing documenting the deep need to create an inner space for the new life to come.

Romania 2020, 85 minutes 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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