The 17th edition of the festival expands its educational component through a program dedicated to teenagers and intergenerational dialogue, which includes several events that take place over three consecutive days.
The program includes six events with film screenings, seven non-formal workshops, an invited exhibition open to the general public and a series of on-site activations, including a volunteer fair, film reception preparation talks and meetings with authors and filmmakers .
The event takes place at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, in the Cinema Hall and the Media Hall, and is supported by Kaufland Romania.
We are expecting more than 900 teenagers at the events prepared together with a number of organizations: UNHCR, Expert Forum, Funky Citizens, Rhea Association, and other partners.
The aim is to provide a learning experience, familiarization with the documentary film and socio-emotional exploration for a diverse category of teenagers from different areas, from high schools in Bucharest and its surroundings, the cinematic experience being mediated through reception exercises and doubled by workshops and socialization contexts.
Also here, in a pilot exercise, we propose a meeting between teenagers and seniors, in partnership with day care centers in Bucharest.
Participation is free with prior registration: https://forms.gle/
Youth Days films
Photophobia
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík / 2023 / 71 min. / Color
11 April
Horia Bernea Studio, Peasant Museum Cinema
10:00 AM and 3:00 PM
On a cold February morning, 12-year-old Niki and his family arrive at the Kharkiv metro station to take shelter from the terrifying war raging outside. For Niki's family, daylight is synonymous with mortal danger, and the boy is not allowed to leave the station premises, living under the constant glow of their neon lights. While aimlessly wandering around the abandoned cars and full platforms, Niki meets Vika (11), and a new world opens up to him. As their bond strengthens, the children find the courage once again to feel the sun on their faces.
Imaginary Youth
Ruxandra Gubernat / 2024 / 84 min. / Color
12 April
Horia Bernea Studio, Peasant Museum Cinema
3:00 PM
13 April
Horia Bernea Studio, Peasant Museum Cinema
11:00 AM
“Imaginary Youth” follows three teenagers through their final years of high school, before, during, and after the Covid confinement. While pondering about leaving Romania after they finish school, Una - an actress, Habet - a trapper and Stefania - an environmental activist get caught in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis. Personal dramas and dilemmas unfold, as the three try to make sense of growing up and what’s happening around them. Who’s gonna make it?
The years of our youth
The screening includes a series of four short films produced between 1970-1987 by Sahia Studio - the life and struggles of teenagers are portrayed in these films, presented in a conversation from a contemporary perspective. What of the fears, hopes and dreams of teenagers then are still alive for young people now, and which became a matter of the past?
Short films in the selection:
Adolescence - Florica and Paul Holban / 1970 / 11 min. / Black & White
Winter loses summer... - Iancu (Ion) Moscu / 1974 / 10 min. / Black & White
On the banks of Ozana - Copel Moscu / 1984 / 13 min. / Color
Graduates - Doru and Paula Segall / 1986 / 11 min. / Color
12 April
Horia Bernea Studio, Peasant Museum Cinema
10:00 AM
I am the director of my story
The screening-event consists of a screening of two short documentary films made by director Alina Șerban and a meeting with part of the creative team. As part of the project, Alina Șerban held film storytelling workshops with young people from foster homes where they directed and performed scenes from their own lives.
Vanessa / 2023 / 27 min. / Color
I am Nicu / 2023 / 16 min. / Color
13 April
Horia Bernea Studio, Peasant Museum Cinema
1:30 PM
Youth Days workshops
Finding my place
Theater-forum workshop
Trainer: Anca Munteanu (actress, playwright)
11 April
Media hall, Peasant Museum Cinema
12:30 AM - 2:00 PM and 5:00 - 6:30 PM
"In this workshop I will challenge participants to answer the question "Where is my place?" using a combination of theater games, creative writing exercises and forum theater. Together we will explore situations (that volunteer participants want to share) where teenagers have felt integrated or not integrated, we will explore the idea of community and micro-community. By putting the situations in which adolescents felt integrated/non-integrated into a theatrical context, we will try to find solutions to them together, both at individual, group and society level." (Anca Munteanu, trainer)
Anca Munteanu is an actress and playwright. She is co-founder of the artistic exploration platform Rhea and of the non-formal educational center Flori,girls and boys. She is a graduate of UNATC, a resident of the School of Political Theatre at Macaz and Drama 5: Dramatic Writing Residency at Reactor. She debuted as a playwright with the play Wedding in Oaș, staged at the Teatrul de Nord Satu Mare, and as an actress in the feature film Teambuilding. She founded and coordinated, since April 2022, the Ukrainian teenage theater group UPT (Underground Pickles Team), facilitated by the Independent Midwives Association. She has facilitated theater workshops at ID Fest, Ideo Ideis and Reactive theater festivals.
Partner organisations:
RHEA (platformarhea.ro) is a platform for interdisciplinary artistic explorations, focusing mainly on performing arts and cinema. Our aim is to contribute to international artistic research and production. Furthermore, we want to explore themes relevant to female audiences and provide a space especially for artists and professionals with whom we share common values.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for people forced to flee their homes because of conflict and persecution. We lead international action to protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. We deliver life-saving assistance, help safeguard fundamental human rights, and develop solutions that ensure people have a safe place called home where they can build a better future. We also work to ensure that stateless people are granted a nationality. We work in over 130 countries, using our expertise to protect and care for millions.
Register here: https://forms.gle/
How do you get involved in your community’s life?
Education and civic involvement workshop
Trainer: Ana Mocanu and Elena Calistru, Funky Citizens
12 April
Media hall, Peasant Museum Cinema
12:30 PM -2:00 PM and 5:00 PM -6:30 PM
Civic education is a subject we don't get enough of in school. In our view, it explains how Romanian democracy works and our role as citizens. It is important to understand the system if we plan to change it. Equally important is to understand that cliché "change starts with you". Here are some of the topics we will go through together:
- basic tools for interacting with authorities resources and tools to fight misinformation orientation in the civic-administrative space: which institution is in charge of...
- the decision-making route: how are decisions made in our communities?
- introduction to advocacy (stakeholder mapping, agenda setting)
- about protests and flash mobs
- what do our representatives do? From public authorities to European institutions.
Ana Mocanu has been doing youth projects for 6 years on topics such as civic engagement, student rights, disadvantaged areas and gender equality. Ana is a community manager at Funky and works to connect local and national communities of civically engaged citizens, journalists and activists. She is also in charge of the research side of the organisation on topics such as transparency of public institutions and how it affects misinformation among young people.
Elena Calistru is the president and co-founder of Funky Citizens. In addition to her role as a civil society representative at European level in the Social and Economic Council, Elena tracks public money in Romania through her expertise on the budgets of public institutions and public procurement. She has extensive expertise in coordinating independent election observation campaigns, legislative advocacy and combating disinformation.
Partner organisation:
Funky Citizens is the meeting place for citizens who are not resigned to the status quo but understand their role in democracy, which is why they flex their civic muscle and often take part in the decision-making process. Our strongest weapons are initiatives that make smart use of technology, data-driven advocacy and communication, and civic education - a cross-cutting pillar in everything we do. Funky is the founder of the Factual.ro project, the first fact-checking site for political statements in Romania, a member of the International Fact-checking Network and the European Fact-checking Network and a third-party fact-checker in the Meta program for checking posts containing misinformation. On the journalism side, Funky founded the Buletin de București project, an editorial project tracking public money in Bucharest and Ilfov.
Register here: https://forms.gle/
Escape Fake - How deep fake technology is used to spread misinformation online
Media education workshop
Trainers: Irina Paraschivoiu (Chief Operations Officer Polycular), Thomas Layer Wagner (artist, designer, Polycular founder)
13 aprilie
Media hall, Peasant Museum Cinema
1:15 PM
In this workshop, participants will have a first introductory part, where we analyze the concepts of deep fakes, the technologies used, and the viral example in this regard. In the second part of the workshop, participants will be divided into teams to play Escape Fake, an augmented-reality escape room game that can be played on mobile devices. Users are contacted by a quantum reality hacker who guides them through a web of trivia questions, augmented reality puzzles, and clues to unravel what is and ultimately save us all from a dystopian future. Visitors are invited to try the Escape Fake game, test their knowledge of fakes, fact- hecking, and disinformation, and contribute their ideas for a future without fakes.
Irina Paraschivoiu is the Chief Operations Officer at the educational gaming company Polycular. Irina works in the field of digital strategy, is a researcher, and creates mobility projects in urban areas, combining people's needs with technological progress. Among other things, she is doing a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction with an emphasis on urban technology. She initiated a variety of innovation projects in the public, private, and non profit sectors and is passionate about empowering users through participatory design.
Thomas Layer Wagner is an artist, designer, and researcher. His passion is imagining, prototyping and creating new experiences, from media art installations to pervasive games. He has been working in interactive media for 12 years. In his spare time, he enjoys dancing in a modern and jazz dance company and cooking for family and friends.
Mădălina Voinea works in digital analysis of disinformation narratives on social media, with a background in international relations and political analysis.In the field of active citizenship, she works on countering misinformation and offers public speaking courses and in "Let's talk about YOU(th)!", a program dedicated to empowering young people in Romania and the Republic of Moldova.
Registration here: https://forms.gle/
How can we use art and technology to express the impact of disinformation on our society?
Media education workshop
Trainers: Sorin Ioniță (president of Expert Forum), Alex Lungu (video producer)
13 April
Media hall, Peasant Museum Cinema
3:15 PM
In this workshop moderated by Sorin Ioniță, artists from Romania, Austria and Belarus will share their experience in creating works that contribute to the general public’s understanding of the impact of disinformation. We will have 20-minute sessions, centered on the question from which each artist started their creation.
Sorin Ioniță is the president of the think tank Expert Forum (EFOR) where he carries out, among other things, activities to monitor online disinformation, coordinates the China Index project in five European countries, and delivers humanitarian assistance in Ukraine. He is a radio and TV commentator, blogger, and photographer. He graduated from Politehnica Bucharest; then Philosophy; a Master’s at CEU; and a PhD in Political Science. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University, DC. He is the author of The Decade of Rage and Indignation: how the last ten years have changed us, Humanitas, 2021.
Alex Lungu is an audio-video producer focusing on documentaries, animation, and edu-tainment. Together with Ana Turos, they have developed the art exposition “Look out! Videos a year from now”, where an AI replica tells you all about deep fakes and their endless possibilities. Their installation explores AI diffusion-based visual creation, its endless possibilities, and its potential impact on an individual’s life.
Egor Kraft is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of arts, media, technology, film and research. He is currently also teaching at Kunstuniversität Linz. Egor has received the New Technological Art Award (2022), as well as numerous other nominations. His art exposition displayed at One World, Hashdox, was selected as an Honorary Mention for the STARTS Prize 2023.
Elena Rabkina is a photo documentary and interactive artist, an activist, mentor and co-organizer of several art festivals in Minsk. She researches and documents the immaterial story of people, things and places, and the role of communities in them. Her artworks frequently reflect on mental health, migration, activism and community building.
Partner organisation:
Expert Forum (EFOR) is a Bucharest-based think tank, set up by well-known experts in public policy and public governance reform in 2011. The main sectors covered by the organization are: administration reform, justice and anti-corruption reform; ; energy, active citizenship and elections, propaganda, and disinformation. Expert Forum members have been involved in the most important evaluations of institutional reforms, analyzing the policy process in recent years in Romania and neighboring countries (particularly in the Western Balkans and Moldova), in collaboration with the European Commission, Council of Europe, World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.
Registration here: https://forms.gle/
Electionville - a civic game that will teach you how to govern your dream city
Interactive game - workshop - in teams
11 April
Peasant Museum Cinema, Sala de creativitate (et. 1)
12:30 PM
Electionville is a multi-award winning floor game created by a civics teacher under the umbrella of the Swedish Agency and used by schools in several European countries. It has been implemented as part of the European EUlectionplay project in 4 countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal and Slovakia. With this game students learn how to govern a city, how to choose their priorities, how to allocate resources and how to convince other players to vote for their proposals.
Partner organisation:
Aspire Teachers is an NGO that wants to bring a great teacher to every child in Romania. Their mission is to connect school with real life through excellent teachers. They support quality teacher training in Romania through applied training activities with a multidisciplinary curriculum, with impactful pedagogical practices adapted to the realities of the 21st century.
The Swedish Embassy in Romania works to promote and expand the relations between Romania and Sweden in all policy sectors. Ambassador Therese Hydén is heading the embassy since September 2019.
An important activity of the embassy is to work for increased trade between our two countries by promoting Swedish companies present in Romania and/or companies planning to establish themselves here. This effort is made together with the local Business Sweden Office which can inform Swedish companies about export opportunities in Romania.
Register here: https://forms.gle/
*The film screenings will take place in the Horia Bernea Studio/Peasant Museum Cinema, 3 Monetăriei Street, sector 1, Bucharest. All screenings are followed by a discussion.
*The workshops and exhibition take place in the Media hall.
*The interactive game Electionville will take place in the cinema lobby.
*All activities are free of charge.
Youth Days partners
