Romania's Astra Film Festival 2022 announces its winners
The winners of the 29th edition of Romania's Astra Film Festival have been selected, and the festival will be continuing online.
As every year, there were four competition sections: Romania, Central and Eastern Europe, New Voices of the Documentary, and DocSchool.
The Best Film of the Romania Section is the production The Chalice. Of sons and daughters by Cătălina Tesăr and Dana Bunescu, "for its stylistic virtuosity, the scope of its research, and the depth of its anthropological effort. For building a bridge of understanding between cultures, opening toward a world that often remains hidden behind commonplaces. For its ability to create a dramatic and emotional story about the family and the condition of women. For exploring the values of a culture caught between modernity and tradition".
The award for Best Director, in the same category, was offered to Adina Popescu and Iulian Manuel Ghervas, authors of the film Eagles from Țaga, "for its stylistic rigor and the memorability of its protagonist. For its exploration of marginal typologies with compassion, attention, and humor. For showing how perseverance can turn failure into success. For its ability to convince viewers that tenaciousness can draw a straight line on any surface".
The distinction of the Best Documentary Film of Central and Eastern Europe was awarded to Pawnshop (Poland, 2022), directed by Łukasz Kowalski, "for presenting in an interesting and humorous way the endeavors of the owner and employees of an improbable pawnshop business in search to strike a blow, in a disenfranchised community where the only valuables are personal histories of despair”.
The Best Non-Fiction Film in New Voices of the Documentary is Too close, directed by Botond Püsök, "for a film that shows a heroine who struggles to hold her family together in a life nearly crushed by a stigma that she most cruelly cannot avoid internalizing; for a film that uses the simplest cinematic devices to bring to the screen a chilling story of survival".
The award for Best Director, in the DocSchool Section, a category dedicated to films produced by universities from all over the world, was won by Eric Esser for his film, Family Love - My Grandpa, National Socialism and Me, "for an essay film that bravely explores an uncomfortable personal history and the path to uncovering it with both vulnerability and sincerity, as well as with great intellectual and narrative skill".
The jury considered the Best Film of the DocSchool section to be A Place in the World by Emilie Beyssac Cywinska, "a tender, warm family portrait that unfolds with incredible ease, naturalness, and affection, subtly revealing the larger historical forces that are at play within the smaller scale of day-to-day life”.
The winners - directors from Romania, Germany, France, Slovakia, and Poland - were all present at the Awards Gala, which took place in the Dome.
"We decided to hold the Astra Film Festival Awards Gala in the Dome, precisely because our festival has continuously reinvented itself and we are always looking towards the future. The presence of over twenty thousand children at Astra Film Junior and the quality of the productions we’ve seen made by young documentary filmmakers give us confidence that the future will be a good one,” said Dumitru Budrala, director-founder of the Astra Film Festival.
Astra Film Fest will be continuing online until October 30, during which time audiences located anywhere in Romania will be able to view 41 films from the festival's official selection.
Details are available here.
(Photo source: Astra Film Festival)
