Tickets for the 19th edition of the One World Romania International Documentary & Human Rights Film Festival are on sale starting today, April 2, on Eventbook.ro. More than 40 documentary films, inviting audiences to reflect on the breaking point we are currently experiencing, from democratic values under strain and far-right discourses becoming normalized to the ever shrinking frame of acceptable public discourse, will be screened between April 24–29 at the Peasant Museum Cinema, Elvire Popesco Cinema, the Eforie Cinematheque, and Apollo111 Cinema in Bucharest.
Films about humanity, war, and resistance at OWR19
Marc Isaacs, the director in focus at last year’s festival, returns to Bucharest with “Synthetic Sincerity”, a docufiction that lies at the precipice of humanism and takes a tender and bittersweet look at the moral and ethical encroachment of artificial intelligence into our lives. Starring Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache, the film will open OWR19 on Friday, April 24, from 19:00 at the Peasant Museum Cinema, with Isaacs present for a Q&A session after the second screening in the festival. Closing OWR19, the already-announced “ORWELL: 2+2=5” by Raoul Peck will reveal disturbing socio-political truths from the works of writer George Orwel and show how they resonate ever-more powerfully today.
An essential watch and one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year, Poh Si Teng’s “American Doctor”, which was screened at both Sundance and Visions du Réel, addresses the dehumanization of people during war and sees three medics risking their lives take on the added responsibility of testifying on behalf of the voiceless from Gaza, where international rules are pulverised together with the bodies of innocents. Memory is also at the heart of the CPH:DOX-bound “Something Familiar,” which follows British-Romanian filmmaker Rachel Tâpârjan both in the director’s chair and in front of the camera, after she tries to help a stranger find her birth mother and finds herself drawn into the shadows of her own dark family history.
Special screenings at Apollo111 Cinema: activism and provocative cinema
One World Romania will make its debut in the relaxed setting of Apollo111 Cinema with several screenings followed by warm, open discussions with the audience. The series will open on Saturday, April 25, with a special screening honoring the late German director Rosa von Praunheim. A radical treatise on gay culture and politics that exploded post-Stonewall activism in the early 1970s, “It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives” (1972) has internationally redefined queer liberation ever since. In the spirit of von Praunheim’s excessive style, the screening will be followed by a drag show and a queer party at Apollo111 Parties.
The second day of screenings at Apollo111 Cinema focuses on solidarity and family bonds. In Anastasiya Miroshnichenko’s “Welded Together”, a young welder from Belarus tries to rescue her sister from a toxic family environment, while Mehrdad Oskouei’s “A Fox Under a Pink Moon”, following an Afghan teenage girl who has been trying for five years to escape Iran and join her mother in Austria, explores notions of belonging and the pursuit of a safer, better life. The latter film is also part of the “Adopt a Documentary” program, having been symbolically adopted by UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency Romania, who will also join the post-screening talk.
SAHIA VINTAGE Connect: Memory and living in Eastern European cinema
The SAHIA VINTAGE program, established over a decade ago around the archives of the Alexandru Sahia Studio, is evolving this year into SAHIA VINTAGE Connect, an extension proposing a pan-regional approach to the documentary output of the former Eastern Bloc. In a present increasingly shaped by a selective recollection of history, the initiative aims to explore a shared imaginary formed at the intersection of national archives and to inspire reflection on memory, both at an individual and collective level.
Starting with an early cinematic tribute by then-student Jiří Menzel to the new model of dwelling introduced in socialist Czechoslovakia, the prefabricated panel building which would eventually reshape the Central and Eastern European architectural landscape, and arriving two decades later at the daily life of one such panel block, a single workers' hostel on the outskirts of Bucharest, the program presented at OWR19, “Body. Home. Shelter.” looks at the relationship between homes and bodies in four different forms: from the home as a more or less secure physical and psychological space, to the body-as-home and zone of contention, raising questions about power and resistance within stifling political circumstances.
SAHIA VINTAGE Connect is curated by Adina Brădeanu.
After the festival concludes in Bucharest, a selection of the films will also be available to stream online, from anywhere in Romania, between April 30 - May 31.
ORGANIZER: One World Romania Association
CULTURAL PROJECT CO-FUNDED BY: Administration of the National Cultural Fund (AFCN)
INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERS: The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant – Peasant Museum Cinema, Embassy of France in Romania, French Institute in Bucharest – Elvire Popesco Cinema, National Film Archive – Eforie Cinematheque, Romanian Cultural Institute, DACIN-SARA, Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Romania, Goethe-Institut Bucharest, UNHCR – The UN Refugee Agency Romania, Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark in Romania, Czech Centre Bucharest, Embassy of the Czech Republic in Bucharest, Italian Cultural Institute Bucharest, Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre Bucharest
CORPORATE PARTNERS: Groupama, Valvis Group, BMW Romania
PARTNER VENUES: Apollo111 Cinema, Echoes Haus, Lokal, Seneca Anticafe
YOUTH DAYS PARTNERS: The National Museum of the Romanian Peasant – Peasant Museum Cinema, Peasant Museum Image Archive, Polish Institute Bucharest , “I.L. Caragiale” National University of Theatre and Film, ARAS – Romanian Association Against AIDS, Pe Stop Association, Incubatorul Civic Digital, Techsoup Association, Tineri pentru Tineri, VIS – Victimele Infracțiunilor Sexuale Association, Save the Children Romania, Romanian Angel Appeal
FRIENDS OF OWR: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e. V. – Rule of Law Programme Southeast Europe, The National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB), Expert Forum (EFOR), F-Sides, Copii pentru Viitor Association, Greenpeace Romania, Snoop, Țeapă Țeapă Țeapă, Faculty of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Political Science, University of Bucharest, Anthropology and Visual Studies & Society MA, Faculty of Political Science, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest (SNSPA), co/laborator film, microFILM, PRISMA FILM, Mediawise Society, Sahia Vintage, KineDok
TICKETS THROUGH: Eventbook.ro
MONITORING PARTNER: mediaTRUST Romania
MEDIA PARTNERS: RFI România, Radio România Cultural, Scena9, IQads, Revista FILM, Zile și Nopți, Școala9, Cărturești, Films in Frame, Film Menu, LiterNet, Modern Times Review, Like5.ro, Cinepub, Cinefilia, Happ.ro
THE FESTIVAL WAS ESTABLISHED IN 2008 BY: Czech Center Bucharest
Other event partners, both new and traditional, are currently in the process of confirmation.
The project does not necessarily represent the position of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund. AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or how the project's results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding recipient.
