This year, we’re proposing a new format for exploring the themes that concern us: fewer screenings, more time for meeting, discussing and connecting. From Monday to Thursday, at the Peasant Museum Cinema we’re showing one film a day, giving it our full attention. We’ll test this format twice more in between our regularly programmed festival days. 

Student protest culture will be addressed in a conversation between two students who are active in Serbia’s ongoing protests and Romanian activists. The debate will be moderated by the curator Anca Păunescu and the director Andreea Lăcătuș. Our starting point is ”The Blockade”, a 2012 film made by Igor Bezinović, which made the rounds in many student activism circles, Romania included. 

As the festival comes of age, we invite you to reflect on the local production of documentary films and the platforms available to emerging filmmakers. We’re inviting four directors, who have yet to make their feature film debut, for an extended dialogue with industry representatives, international guests, activists and the general public about opportunities, perspectives and visions, starting from the shorts they made. 

We’re addressing fascism head-on starting from a selection of newsreels from 1940-1945 curated by Alexandru Solomon, detailed on the following page. 

Starting from the special screening of ”Tooth and Nail”, directed by Mihai Gavril Dragolea and Radu Constantin Mocanu, we’re talking about environmental issues, corruption and radicalization. 

A special event on Palestine focuses on two 1970s films. "Resistance, Why?" (dir. Christian Ghazi), long thought lost and recently restored by Beirut's Nadi Lekol Nas group, captures Palestinian resistance in Lebanon, while "Arab Israeli Dialogue" (dir. Lionel Rogosin), featuring a Palestinian poet and an Israeli writer exploring solutions to their peoples' conflict, stands out for its striking timeliness. After the screenings, a discussion with Rami El Sabbagh, a filmmaker from Lebanon and Christian Ghazi collaborator, will provide deeper insights into the historical and contemporary relevance of political films from the past.

And, because this year we’re revisiting films, actions and directions from past editions that feel more relevant than ever, following the screening of ”A Syrian Love Story”, we’re inviting the local community of Syrian refugees to an open dialogue on decisions, hopes and adapting to the new context generated by Bashar al-Assad’s removal.