14/10/2020 - After showcasing its Romanian Competition in September, the festival has left the main competition for the October online edition

Given the health situation, the Astra Film Festival was forced to split its 2020 edition into an outdoor edition in September and a ten-day, online edition starting on 16 October. If the festival favoured its Romanian Competition for September, as the Romanian directors could easily travel to the city of Sibiu and attend the outdoor screenings, the online edition trains the spotlight on Astra’s other two traditional competitions: the New Voices in Documentary Cinema Competition, also known as the international competition, which showcases first, second or third features by the selected directors; and the Central and Eastern Europe Competition. This year, each of these will showcase ten medium- or feature-length documentaries.

The New Voices in Documentary Cinema Competition consists of Goerg Oberlechner's The Corncrake Paradox (Austria), Sun Hee Engelstoft's Forget Me Not [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Denmark), Natalija Yefimkina's Garage People [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Germaany), Jón Bjarki Magnússon's Half Elf [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Iceland), Andrei Dăscălescu's Holy Father [+see also:
film review
film profile] (Romania), Susanne Kovács' It Takes a Family [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Susanne Kovács
film profile] (Denmark), Sine Skibsholt's Long Live Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Denmark), Carmen Losmann's Oeconomia [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carmen Losmann
film profile] (Germany), Bára Jíchová Tyson's Talking About Adultery [+see also:
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film profile] (USA/Czech Republic) and Eléonore Weber's There Will Be No More Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (France).

The Central and Eastern Europe Competition consists of Luisa Bäde's As Long as You Still Have Arms [+see also:
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film profile] (Germany), Roman Bordun's The Diviners [+see also:
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film profile] (Ukraine), Jonathan Hunter's The Free University [+see also:
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film profile] (Hungary), Goran Radovanovic's The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater [+see also:
film review
film profile] (Serbia), Emma Charles and Ben Evans James' On a Clear Day You Can See the Revolution From Here [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (UK/Kazakhstan), Zsuzsanna Bak's Order and Soul [+see also:
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film profile] (Hungary), Aleksey Sukhovey's Promoting Success (Russia), Maksim Shved's Pure Art [+see also:
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film profile] (Poland/Belarus), Judit Oláh's Return to Epipo [+see also:
film review
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film profile] (Hungary) and Tamara Stepanyan's Village of Women [+see also:
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film profile] (Armenia/France).

All of the films will be available for screening within the territory of Romania. The festival will also make ten titles that screened at the outdoor edition available online, including Ellen Fiske and Joanna Karlberg's Josefin & Florin [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Sweden), which won the top award in the Romanian Competition (see the news), as well as the Astra Film Treasure Trove, consisting of 11 movies that screened at previous editions of the festival.

The online iteration also comes with a new edition of DokTank, the festival’s industry programme, which will be held exclusively online from 18-22 October.