Astra Film Festival
… with the subtitle “Sibiu International Film Festival” has existed since 1993. This year it takes place October 17-23. The Romanian festival in Sibiu sent an email about the selection that has been done and the interesting thematic grouping of the films which have been done as well as the competitive sections listed with an award for “Outstandox”, “Romanian documentaries”, “Central and Eastern European documentaries” and “Student documentaries”. Here is the text:
“We have received over 1,200 submissions from all over the world, many of the documentaries dealing with extremely interesting subjects and using surprising approaches, making it difficult for the Selection Committee to pick the 100 films that make up this year’s official programme and various sidebars.
The 23rd Astra Film Festival welcomes the audiences to an exciting documentary cinema week. A selection of the best new international, Eastern European, and Romanian documentaries dealing with some of the burning issues in contemporary reality, are grouped in the theme programmes Inside Radical Islam, No Place Like Dis-place, Citizens of the Online World. Strong authorial voices and outstanding skills are reflected in the films in the theme sections Self-Family-Society, Doc-vlog, Circumscribed Spaces, Stories from Urbania, and OutstanDox. Surprising stories and incredible characters emerge from the films in the theme sections Encounters, Refurbished Past, and Reality Under Cover.
This year, Astra Film pays tribute to the work of Fred Wiseman (photo), and invites you to meet a legend of documentary cinema.
A special programme features recent works of the great masters of documentary cinema Patricio Guzman, Gianfranco Rosi, Werner Herzog and Thom Andersen.
Last but not least, the new formats – VR, 360, webdoc, full dome – are present in the New media – immersive documentary programme: The Future Is Now.”
Many of the films have been reviewed or noted on this site like “Depth Two”, “Don Juan”, “Train to Adulthood”, “The Dazzling Light of Sunset”, “The Dybbuk, A Tale of Wandering Souls”, “Among the Believers” and “Sonita”.
