Rome is burning and we’re making a festival. Since our last edition, the streets have been filled with people who’ve found a cause worth fighting for. For the first time since 1989, there blew a wind of solidarity. We looked in the calendar and noticed that 25 years have passed. 25 years should have been enough. We’ve gathered films that look back at this quarter of a century and to what had happened before in Eastern Europe. A man of Solidarity, Marcel Łoziński comes from Poland with his films, produced between 1973 and 2013. With an eye just as critical and free in the
dictatorship years as in the years of transition, Łoziński challenges us to go over what we’ve been through and where we’re headed.
This year’s heroes are the activists (what an “ugly” word, born again from the ashes of propaganda...). The films included in their dedicated section portray activists along with their weaknesses, failures and doubts. Whether they oppose a highway or a dictator, their stubbornness is not always pleasant, but that doesn’t make them less praiseworthy.
Corruption – another word that has become repulsive and pale from too much use. The films grouped around this idea are restoring its “glow”: they present it like a multifaceted creature, a crooked way of functioning between people and
their states, a global virus present in the Czech Republic, Russia or India.
Are media ethics still observed? The weaknesses of the fourth power make the front page all over the world. What alternatives do we have when the press knows no limits, diving deep into manipulation and corruption? We’ve tried to take a look at this phenomenon and its solutions through films from five different continents.
Love too is a human right. It sounds frivolous, but society, laws or family often come between two people who love each other. The films in this section remind us that human rights are not an expression of the wooden language imposed by international organizations, but a necessity stemming from the heart.
The films that are part of One World Romania 7 hit PET bottles against one another; they write their despair on walls and dissolve the hypocrisy and filth surrounding us. But they speak in the universal language of cinema; they are more creative than any slogan, more acid than any press article. We associate ourselves with artists like Dan Perjovschi and Gianina Carbunariu: their art is based on quick reaction, on texts and contexts taken from reality. The presence of these comrades of the documentary film both honours and inspires us.
25 years is a long time, but it seems it has not been long enough.
That’s the very reason why we’re making a festival, because we’re incensed…

Alexandru Solomon