The Work-in-Progress section of One World Romania returns in a new "doc-workshop" format
Upon its 17th edition, One World Romania’s dedication to the local exposure of documentary cinema, further expands its Work-in-Progress industry section into a new, "doc-workshop" format. Open to short and feature-length projects from seasoned and first-time filmmakers alike, the OWR Work-in-Progress is conceived as a program of one-on-one sessions for Romanian documentaries in late production or post-production phase. Over the course of four days, the selected projects will benefit from the valuable guidance of internationally renowned tutors Dana Bunescu and Tue Steen Müller.
The Work-in-Progress program will include an introductory activity, project presentation, group feedback and individual sessions.
Dana Bunescu is a Romanian editor and a sound-designer. She studied Physics at the University of Bucharest and Editing, Sound and Animation in the Multi-media Department of the National University for Theater and Film, Bucharest. As editor and /or sound-designer she collaborated with numerous directors, relevant for the New Romanian Wave as Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu), Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Tales from the Golden Age), Calin Peter Netzer (Child’s Pose, Ana, mon amour), Andrei Ujica (The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu), Radu Jude (Everybody in our Family, Aferim!, Scarred Hearts, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn). She is Co-author for two documentary movies: The Distance between Me and Me, together with Mona Nicoara and The Chalice. On Sons and Daughters, together with Catalina Tesăr. She was awarded with the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the Berlinale 2017.
Documentary Consultant and Critic, Tue Steen Müller 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). 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, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy. He also writes reviews at www.filmkommentaren.dk.
Dana Bunescu is a well-known Romanian editor and sound designer who recently co-directed several documentaries. She authored the editing and the sound design of the most representative fiction films of the New Romanian Wave (“The Death of Mr Lazarescu” by Cristi Puiu, “4 Month, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” by Cristian Mungiu, among others), as well as of several important Romanian documentaries (for instance “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu” by Andrei Ujică). In 2017 she was awarded the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution in Editing.
Tue Steen Müller
Documentary Consultant and Critic, Tue Steen Müller 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). 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, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy. He also writes reviews at www.filmkommentaren.dk
Răzvan Marchiș
Director
Iolanda Vasile
Producer
Armine Vosganian
Director
Adela Mara
Production Manager
Paula Onet
Director
Ada Solomon
Producer
Diana Caravia
Producer
Helena Maksyom
Director
Adrian Pirvu
Producer
Vlad Dragne
Director
Ruxandra Nițescu
Producer
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan
Director
Elena Martin
Producer
Răzvan Marchiș
Răzvan Marchiș is a multilateral artist and trainer. After graduating UNATC film school in Bucharest, in 2013 with the short "Câmpineanu 12", Răzvan shot the short documentary "Țesătoria de la parter" and worked as 1st AD for Cristi Puiu's bit in the shortbus "Bridges of Sarajevo". In 2015 he returned to his hometown, Oradea, and worked with a theatre NGO (Experiment. Teatru. Clandestin), before starting his own venture on the independent cultural and educational scene, MA hub. Through the years, though he also explored theater and contemporary dance, he remained loyal to his passion for cinema, organising a cineclub screening both fiction and documentary arthouse movies. Recently he’s been ever more busy with cinema, teaching workshops (Meet, Point & Shoot and a planned collaboration within the CinED program) and having his feature debut with an off competion screening of a 1st cut of the documentary "Journey.. far away from Africa" within the BEAST film festival in Porto (October, 2023).
Iolanda Vasile
Experienced cultural programmer and researcher in post-colonial studies, social anthropology, gender studies in war contexts and south-south relations, with demonstrated abilities in projects with international coverage. Currently a researcher for the Project “EDU-AM: Revolutionary pedagogies? History of the education projects in Angola and Mozambique (1960s-1980s)”, University of Coimbra, Portugal (2023-2025). Programmer and Curator for BEAST International Film Festival, Porto, Portugal. Initiated and curated the “Socialist Cine-Geography” program. Co-coordinator and course designer for "Arts, Activisms and Memories" course, for the Latin American Council for Social Sciences (CLACSO), Argentina.
Armine Vosganian
Armine Vosganian is a Romanian- Armenian actress and film director. She has graduated from both Theatre Acting and Film Directing in 2014 at National University of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in Bucharest, Romania and a MA Film Making degree at London Film School, UK. As a writer/director she has been working on several project such as documentary series (Memory of the community, 2017-), documentary features (Miutyun, 2024, Ervant, 2021-), short fiction (Ishtar,2020 | Lilith,2019 | Lovage Bundle, 2014 | Happy Birthday, 2013) and music videos (Into myPlanet, Into myGong Self,2019-)
Armine has been working closely with her parents, adapting her father's prose and performing concerts with her mother. The family had worked together on operas which were performed at the National Opera of Bucharest. In the present, Mihaela and Armine Vosganian are the founders of the musical movement of Archetipal Transrealism.
In 2014, Armine becomes a co-founder of a theatre company, along with her classmates, called RAMPA where she's been working as an actress, playwriter and producer. Rampa is well known for staging first hand in Romania work such as Sugar Kremlin by Vladimir Sorokin, The Name by Jon Fosse, Staipelochian, based on The Book of Whispers by Varujan Vosganian and The Flower Show by Istvan Orkeny.
Armine has co-produced and acted in one of the first telematic one woman shows in Romania and other international educational projects within Creative Europe and Tele Encounters company as actor and video artist. They also worked on musicals such as “The Suicide Shop” based on Jean Teule’s novel.
At the moment, Armine is a lecturer at the National University of Theatrical Arts and Cinematography in Bucharest and Hyperion University.
Adela Mara
Trained as an art historian, Adela has over 15 years of experience in the international art market field and working with museums and auction houses in Europe. She has participated in and organized numerous art fairs, national and international exhibitions, and extensive projects for the cultural world. Since 2019, she has become passionate about the world of movie production, and since then, she has been working with production companies in Italy and Romania as a Production Manager.
Paula Onet
Paula Onet is a Romanian documentary film director and cinematographer, currently living in France. Her film “As You Like It”, premiered at Karlovy Vary and was screened in more than 40 festivals around the world. Her multimedia projects were shown at the 2014 Venice Biennale exhibition, the National Art Gallery in Prague, and other galleries in Turkey, Romania, and Spain. In her recent projects, she explores the captivating storytelling potential of dance on film, further expanding the boundaries of her multidisciplinarity work.
Ada Solomon
Ada Solomon is a producer at HiFilm Productions & microFILM. She has co-produced with numerous European countries & has released her films in over 50 territories. She is the Deputy Chairwoman of the board of the European Film Academy, the Executive President of EWA, the Romanian National Coordinator of EAVE, member of the executive board of ACE. She was awarded with the European Co-production Award – Prix Eurimages & the Central European Initiative Award at the Trieste Film Festival.
Diana Caravia
Diana Caravia is a producer & partner at microFILM, Romania. She produced Alexandru Solomon’s documentary ARSENIE. AN AMAZING AFTERLIFE (2023) which screened in Karlovy Vary IFF, IDFA, Dokufest, and Valladolid IFF. She was the executive producer of Radu Jude’s feature DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (Special Jury Prize in Locarno, Romania’s submission for the Oscar’s Best Foreign Language film), the short films SEMIOTIC PLASTIC (which premiered at Venice IFF 2021), MEMORIES FROM THE EASTERN FRONT (documentary, which premiered at Berlinale 2022) & THE POTEMKINISTS (which premiered at Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in 2022). She is a graduate of MIDPOINT TV Launch, LIM Development Angels programme, CineLink Producers Lab & WEMW Genre Rules Inspirational Lab.
Helena Maksyom
Graduate with honors from The National Aviation University in Kyiv, master’s degree “Ecology and Environmental protection”. Worked as a journalist, translator, writer, project manager, cinematographer and film-director.
Her feature documentary debut as a director “Everything will not be fine 2020” premiered in competition at IDFA and won several international awards.She has also worked on several short documentaries for Goethe Institut Ukraine and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. Graduate of EsoDoc 2021. Winner of the HBO Max Award and Current Time TV Award at East Doc Platform Pitch 2023.
Since the full scale russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022,she has been volunteering near the front lines in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions and since April 2022 has been an active-duty member of the Ukrainian National Guard serving as a combat medic in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions. Helena Maksyom is a recipient of the medal for military service to Ukraine and has been recently promoted to second lieutenant commanding an infantry platoon.
Adrian Pirvu
Graduate of The National University of Film and Drama in Bucharest, BA in directing for film and TV, master’s degree in film production. Has directed and produced several short films and documentaries. After teaching English in China for a year, worked as a video producer for an NGO concerned with disability rights advocacy. Debut in feature documentary film as co-director and co-producer with “Everything will not be fine”.
Participated in several international documentary pitches and workshops: Docs in Thessaloniki , BDC Discoveries, Last Stop Trieste, CineDoc Tbilisi, East Doc Platform.
EURODOC 2023 graduate.
Vlad Dragne
Vlad Dragne is a first-year MA student at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. He began his journey into film by documenting the surreal moments in the daily life of his high school classmates, then studied Film and Television Production at the University of York, UK, where he developed his passion for alternative analogue processes, resulting in crafting his own photographic equipment. Building upon personal experiences, he seeks new ways to reconcile the individual and collective past with the present and to question the general attitude of indifference and cynical disengagement that characterises contemporary society.
Ruxandra Nițescu
Ruxandra Nițescu is a first-year student on the Photography and Dynamic Image Master’s Degree at the National University of Arts in Bucharest. Her artistic practice is driven by the desire to explore and understand concepts such as loneliness, abandonment, illness, collective or individual trauma. Over the years, she has used photography, video, sound, drawing, and engraving, being interested in their permeability. Recently, her focus has shifted towards the importance of the natural space in relation to personal history and the alleviation of pain.
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan
Monica Lazurean-Gorgan is a documentary filmmaker, a producer and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and also a member of European Film Academy. Monica is the producer of Acasa, My Home by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner of the Sundance Cinematography Award 2020 and other 40 international awards. Monica is the co director for the film Wood premiered in HotDocs and CPH:Dox in 2020, producer for the film Between Revolutions by Vlad Petri, winner of FIPRESCI award at Berlinale 2023; delegate producer for Berlinale Golden Bear winner in 2018 Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie and co-producer of 2015 Sundance selected Chuck Norris vs Communism by Ilinca Călugăreanu. Monica is the director for the film A Mere Breath, winner of Best Doc at Sarajevo IFF 2016 and 10 other international awards, screened on Mubi, Amazon etc.
Elena Martin
Elena has a BA in screenwriting and a MA in film production at UNATC, Bucharest. Since 2019, she has been working at Manifest Film. She is an alumnus of CineLink Producers Lab in Sarajevo, East-West Talent Lab 2022, East Doc Series – 2022 with the documentary series Imaginary Youth and Ex Oriente Film – 2022 with the documentary project Chasing Stumps. She was part of projects such as the EFA awards nominee Acasă, My home (dr. Radu Ciorniciuc), which premiered in Sundance Film Festival; Timebox (dr. Nora Agapi), acquired by HBO, and Between Revolutions which premiered in Berlinale Forum 2023. She is developing and producing features, series and shorts, documentaries as well as fiction, by established and emerging directors.
Previous films: Between revolutions(2023), Kaimos (2020), Laila (2020)
Journey.. far away from Africa
Director: Răzvan Marchiș
A present day recollection of a journey to Africa, as Traian Cocoș remembers it starting from the footage he shot on that period. Between 1971 and 1973 Traian Cocoș was detached with his job by the Romanian Government, together with a group of other specialist, in Zambia, to prospect and map the different mineral deposits in the newly declared republic. In March 1972, the same day that the Romanian delegation lead by Ceaușescu made it’s official visit to Zamabia, Traian Cocoș was delivered his 8mm camera and started documenting his journey with the important visit of the head of state.
Ervant
Director: Armine Vosganian
Short Synopsis:
Family, disciples, and friends give glimpses of the extraordinary life of the Armenian-Romanian painter, Ervant Nicogosian who learnt to paint in the Soviet gulag, worked under the communist dictatorship, and painted until he died, despite slowly going blind after the 1989 Revolution.
Director’s note
The community I grew up in was made up of intellectuals. Some were artists, some mathematicians and engineers, and, obviously, priests. Each one of them, with their poignant eyes and full eyebrows, was a character with an extraordinary life. Most of them were survivors or sons of survivors from the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the XXth century. Like my grandparents. For them, surviving had become a useful skill because WWII broke out with all its deportations, imprisonments, and athrocities.
Some stories need to be told further, a long time after the actions happened and the people lived. The same goes for the life story and artworks of Armenian origin and Romanian-born artist Ervant Nicogosian. Another grandfather.
Most surviving families were destroyed during WWII, fathers were sent to Siberia and mothers would struggle to find ways to raise their children in postwar famine. Some families, especially those who lived in Odesa, Ukraine, and refused to renounce their Romanian citizenship to the Russian one, were sent together to live for many years in gulags. Being isolated together would make them less of a threat. Unfortunately, some of these tragic stories are said to be happening now in 2022 Ukraine.
This was the case of the Nicogosian family and young Ervant spent his teenage years in several Soviet gulags and this period left deep, unhealable wounds. His life is one of a forever rebel who believes that everything happens for a reason and he wants to understand. Does life and art have a meaning or purpose? Or it’s just a job like any other? Permanent inner revolt. Who am I and what’s my mission? “Always against the current, constantly against one's self, forever against the villains of history.”, his friend, Bedros Horasangian, used to say.
Quiet, going straight on his artistic road, without being tempted by illusionary experiments, Nicogosian created several fundamental cycles of artworks, trying to pull his own emotions and experiences out of his soul. His artistic cycles are intimately connected to the artist's personal life and mostly to his great desire to live and break barriers, to escape a certain artistic conventionalism.
Friends and family give us glimpses of this strange, choleric character. He seemed to be calm and kind, but he tended to make people angry. Some would call him “En-ervant” which means in Romanian irritating.
The interviews in our film are fairly conventional, but this sobriety will be interrupted by tracking close-ups of paintings and objects inside Ervant’s house or handheld shots of exhibitions or mural work. In addition, in remembrance of his haunting theme of windows and gates, the characters will be framed separately at a window or gate, in silence, as if the audience is the point of view of Ervant watching over them from the other side. Another proposition of the visual layer is a leitmotif with macro close-ups of blending colours and sun rays obstructed by different objects.
Long Synopsis:
At the moment, the biography consists of interviews with members of the close family, Ilona Scott, born in a Soviet gulag because her parents were prisoners, along with Ervant's parents, Marian Dobre, the painter who had helped Ervant paint when he became blind and Varujan Vosganian, the president of the Union of Armenians.
All the characters are interviewed by Mara Adela, an art historian, who met Ervant in the last years. Gilda Mologhianu, his only daughter, explains to Adela, who is off camera, how Ervant's Armenian parents found refuge in Odessa during the German occupation of Romania in WWI and how they tried to build a life in this cosmopolitan city.
Shortly after the end of the Great War, Odessa became part of the Soviet Union and very few were allowed to return to Romania. By WWII, there were still many individuals who held nostalgic sentiments toward former homelands. Most of them were surveilled and, eventually arrested and sent off to Siberia. This was the case for the Nicogosian family. This interview is edited with the interview of Ilona Scott whose parents were imprisoned along with Ervant's family. Her interview is projected on the wall of an actual cell of political prisoners the montage includes tracking shots of Jilava (Bucharest), the 13th front, to resemble the Soviet gulags. This building functioned as a Romanian gulag for political prisoners.
Ervant's tragic destiny helped him, though, in finding his calling because in one the gulags, some of the prisoners made up a school with painting workshops and Ervant stunned everyone with his talent.
They were released only in 1948 and they came to Bucharest and there Ervant was admitted to "Nicoale Grigorescu" Institute of Fine Arts and he studied under the guidance of Camil Resssu, Jean Alexandru Steriadi, Marius Bunescu and Nicolae Dărăscu.
Gilda explains further how Ervant manage to support his family during communism and kind of work he has done. Gilda talks, also, about his life after the falling of the communism when several illnesses darkened his life even more, especially blindness.
Gilda's husband, Nicolae and Ervant's grand daughter, Alina, will give different perspective on Ervant's character. Nicolae explains how he helped Ervant with his mural work and he tells Adela some anecdotes on their trips. Nicoale and Alina acknowledge the fact that Ervant was quite difficult at times and made quite some scenes. He was blunt regarding everything and he loved smoking and gossiping. Alina states that her grand father didn't believe in God.
Adela and Ervant's family organizes a retrospective at Arcub Gabroveni pavilion and here we meet Marian Dobre, a painter who shared Ervant's workshop and was also responsible with taking Ervant to the workshop every day and helped him with the action of painting because Ervant was already blind. Marian recalls how funny and precise was Ervant with his plan when imagining the painting or when recalling tragic events or mocking other artists.
The last interview in the present editing of the footage is with Varujan Vosganian who makes a parallel between Ervant and other destinies of Armenian refugees. He recalls a different Ervant, kind, taciturn, and humble in the presence of the Armenian community.
This is the story of Ervant. A boy who spent his adolescence imprisoned and starved in gulags with his family. In that isolated darkness, he learnt how to paint.
Even though they were released after WWII and came to Romania, Ervant never felt free under the communist regime, and right after the fall of communism in 1989, a different kind of imprisonment surrounded him: blindness. But Ervant never stopped painting.
The best way to continue is by telling you how this character, Ervant, came to me.
My name is Armine, the most common name among the Armenian people. My father is Armenian, my mother is Romanian and I am the third generation of survivors of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
The first country that received Armenian refugees 100 years ago was Romania.
My bedtime stories were not the usual ones, Cinderella and Snow White, but stories about my ancestors, about surviving, about war, communism, and so forth.
Growing up, I felt more and more the need to understand my past, so I began a journey of interviewing elders from the Armenian community across Romania, but some people died before I started and Ervant is one of them. His daughter knew my work and she entrusted me with Ervant’s life story.
His life is one of a forever rebel who believes that everything happens for a reason and he wants to understand why. Does life and art have a meaning or purpose? Or it’s just a job like any other? Permanent inner revolt. Who am I and what’s my mission? “Always against the current, constantly against one's self, forever against the villains of history.”
I find it sad that I started shooting right before two wars. First the 40-day war in Nagorno Karabakh where an entire generation of Armenians died and the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia
This project doesn’t describe a victim of history, but a contradictory artist who fascinates and challenges people around him through his resilience. And I want to put his art and life out there through film before they get forgotten.
Still Nia
Director: Paula Onet
Stefania, nicknamed Nia in her childhood, emerges from a 15-year-long amnesia. She confronts the overwhelming memories of her childhood spent in Romanian hospitals due to a misdiagnosis. At 33 years old, she finds herself on the brink of an identity crisis where she has to integrate her past in her life’s story. She’s not searching for culprits but seeking answers in her own body (through dance classes) and in her own imagination (through invented memories).
The Soldier’s Journey
Director: Helena Maksyom
On April 8th 2022, I saw Kramatorsk train station shortly after a Russian rocket obliterated the lives of 51 civilians and saw the bloody remains of women, children and elderly scattered like rags on the platform. I was angry and enlisted in the National Guard of Ukraine. I learned how to treat the wounded and how to survive on the battlefield. I was the only woman in my unit but I gained their respect and found friends. My commander allowed me to film but it was made clear that my job as a soldier came first.
Focusing on life on the frontline, I am both a witness and protagonist in a documentary that follows the transformation of average civilians into combat veterans and what they lose on the way. Life at war has given me an overwhelming clarity of who people really are and amongst all the pain, destruction and moral ambiguity, there are genuine moments of joy, love and human decency. Now, as a recently promoted lieutenant I am torn between the wish to be with my mother who worries me every day, and the responsibility to the young men I now command. I am also a woman in a world of men. For now, I am showing no weakness to my men because they rely on my experience to stay alive. Yet, I have not let go of my hope in humanity and deep down inside, I'm still a girl who wants to dance and be a mom.
This Branch Won’t Break Apar
Director: Vlad Dragne
This Branch Won’t Break Apart is a poetic documentary that depicts the ecological and social crisis of the IOR Park – one of the few green spaces left in Bucharest, whose trees are systematically cut down, burned or poisoned while the authorities stand idle – through the eyes of local activists, artists and residents, looking at their relationship to what is left in the wake of destruction.
Tomorrow is not a promise
Director: Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan
'Tomorrow is not a promise' is a reflection on human nature, it’s a film about the need in ourselves to hunt and conquer, to use nature for our own needs. While making this film about the desire for hunting, the director of the film is hunting images and stories for the film, questioning her own ethical approach.