This year, One World Romania opens on Friday, March 15th, with a series of events for all tastes, from film screenings, presentations and parties:

Special screening of Dead Souls (directed by Wang Bing), followed by a discussion with film critic Andrei Gorzo

A PechaKucha Evening. Recent History and Reticent History – a PechaKucha presentation (20 slides of 20 seconds each) and 10 guests ready to talk about the past, alternative histories and how they are reflected today.

An tan tina Performance (by Nicoleta Lefter), in premiere at Linotip. The performance is a free adaptation of the book False Treaty of Manipulation by Ana Blandiana, and talks about the state of contemporary politics, compared to that of the communist era.

Vintage Sahia Screening Of Lives and Lessons | Of Time and Times at the Project Hall – two short film programs from the Sahia Archives that discuss the transition from communism to democracy, the 1989 period and the following years.

Discussion. Civic Movements and Political Parties in the 1990s – an incursion into the civic movements and the first opposition parties that emerged in the 1990s. The discussion is moderated by Alexandru Solomon and includes Ana Blandiana, Radu Filipescu, Mona Muscă, Smaranda Enache and Radu Vancu.

Love Never Gets Out of Style Party – And the evening ends, of course, with a party at Apollo 111 with live music by Aneb/Plevna, Fraga, Inana, Sarra, Xenofolk, Ion D and Utopus.

The events continue throughout the festival, with debates that address topics such as the history of advertising in the 90’s, The role of people in general journalism, post-war architecture in the current urban landscape, migration experiences, democracy in Russia, Romania in the European Union, intimacy and sexuality now and in the Ceausescu Age, etc.

One of the One World guests is the historian Ian Buruma, who will attend two events, a discussion on his books Year Zero: A History of 1945 and Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, and a debate, alongside filmmaker Radu Jude and historian Adrian Cioflânca, about the depiction of the past in the documentary film.

On March 17th and 18th at POINT, there will be two events dedicated to film distribution: Meeting with ACID: Filmmakers-distributors / Another way for distributing independent films; ACID is a French association that has collaborations with more than 400 screening spaces and distributes independent films in cinemas and film festivals. Some of the ACID members come to Bucharest to discuss and find solutions for a better distribution of Romanian documentaries.

The second event, Documentary Film Distribution: from supermarket to boutique, is supported by KineDok and also aims to discover strategies for documentary film distribution. The guests who will attend the event are Diana Tabakov (Czech Republic – Doc Alliance Films), Tor Fosse (Norway – Tour de Force | Bergen International Film Festival), Maja Lindquist (Sweden – Doc Lounge), Oliver Sertić (Zagreb).

One World brings this year, too, an editing workshop, held by Guillaume Massart and Alexandra Mélot, who will be talking about their film Freedom, on which they worked as a director and an editor respectively, but also two workshops organized by the actors of Touch Me Not, Welcome To Your Sexual Desires and Awakening Sensuality Through Immobility. The workshops aim to create an environment where participants can relax, give up control, so that they can talk and experience them in an uninhibited and confident way.

Moreover, the OWR public will get the opportunity to talk directly with the protagonists of the film, on March 17th at ARCUB, during a debate about privacy and preconceptions.

On March 19th, Civil Society Pitch 3 will take place at POINT, where the 5 participating teams that documented a human rights issue and made a trailer for the documentary at work, will present their project to the jury and the public.

There will be also screenings for high school students – morning screenings with free entrance, followed by discussions. The selected films are Before Father Gets Back, North of the Sun, The Distance Between Me and Me, Camorra, Vintage Sahia.

And as a break between films, ARCEN invites the OWR audience to a walk – and a story – through demolished Bucharest, and Dominic Brezianu and Florin Buhuceanu are the organizers of the Gay in the Bucharest of article 200 urban tour – an incursion into the gay life in Romania in the period up to 2001, during which homosexuality was illegal. The tour will include stories and places about how gay life in Romania has been kept out of sight.

As every year, the OWR film selection addresses pressing and current issues essential to raising public awareness and interest, such as the Focus Israel and Palestine programs consisting of six documentary films and two retrospectives dedicated to filmmakers Avi Mograbi and Michel Khleifi, the well-known sections of OWR dedicated to justice, activists and people with disabilities, the LGBTQ +, Contemporary Family, Superwomen and Work programs, as well as the evenings of retrospectives dedicated to filmmakers who marked the evolution of the documentary film, such as the Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann.

Furthermore, from the selected films, ADFR recommends:

• The Marshal’s Two Executions (directed by Radu Jude) – Marshal Ion Antonescu is the protagonist of a famous film – The Mirror – made by Sergiu Nicolaescu shortly after the Revolution in 1989. If in that film his personality had a heroic nuance, in The Marshal’s Two Executions his actions are called into question. (Andrei Rus)
• The Distance Between Me and Me (directed by Mona Nicoară, Dana Bunescu) – We follow the line of a face and we notice a nose, perhaps we instantly recognize it. To whom belongs this curiously sublime and delightfully curious nose? For many, it is one of the faces of their childhood, the playful voice behind Ninigra and Aligru. For Romanian literature, it is a monument. (Teodora Leu)
• Things We Said Today (work-in-progress) (fragment) (directed by Andrei Ujică) – A time capsule depicting New York between August 13th and 15th, 1965, enframed by the arrival of the Beatles in the metropolis and their first concert on Shea Stadium. The film is narrated from the perspective of two teenagers played by young actors, and is entirely made of archival materials among which the two protagonists will be inserted through special effects.
• Evropa (work-in-progress) (fragment) (directed by Dana Bunescu, Răzvan Rădulescu) – In 2013, five aspiring German filmmakers decide that it is up to them to document the Ukrainian Maidan. How can events happening just 2,000 miles away from the heart of Europe not affect you deeply? In a rented caravan, armed with the latest film-recording and sound recording equipment, the five film students cross Ukraine’s borders shortly after the Maidan protests have been brutally dispersed by the authorities.
• House of Dolls (work-in-progress) (directed by Tudor Platon) – In the summer of 2016, the person I loved the most in the world, my grandmother who raised me, died. I tried to fill the gap left by getting closer to Cica, my mother’s mother, who has never let me call her “grandmother”. Out of my desire to spend more time with her, I went so far as to film her with her friends from her youth during a holiday in the countryside. (Tudor Platon)

The 12th edition of OWR is attended by 90 national and international guests, including Adina Pintilie (director, Touch Me Not), Laura Benson (actress, Touch Me Not), Mona Nicoară (director, The Distance Between Me and Me), Ana Blandiana, Radu Jude (director The Marshal’s Two Executions), Oleg Kozlovsky (activist, co-founder of the Solidarnost Movement for Democracy, and co-founder of the Oborona Democratic Youth Movement in Russia. Often detained and arrested for his defense of democracy, in May 2008, during its last imprisonment, he was recognized by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience).

One World Romania takes place between March 15th-24th, 2019 at Apollo 111, Arcub, Eforie Cinema, Elvire Popesco Cinema, the French Institute, Londohome, 32th Pavilion, the Goethe-Institut Bucharest, POINT, Q Club, Union Cinema.

Tickets can be purchased on Eventbook, from Eventbook sale points or from POINT.

For more information, please visit the One World Romania website or the Facebook page.

Melissa Antonescu

Writer, photographer and videographer. For Films in Frame she writes news about the latest happenings in the film world and brings to the readers' attention the productions that can be seen at the cinema. When she's not writing articles, she's photographing people in a small studio or searching for new cake recipes.