An experimental animated film on the “comfortable” public transportation during rush hours.
Every year, our program Focus Country highlights contemporary cinematographic culture by bringing the cinema circuit of a Central and Eastern European country to Portugal. In 2021, BEAST IFF is pleased to bring Romania as the focus of the festival through Focus Romania.
Composed of the Opening Film session and the Doc Highlights and School Visit programs, the section pays homage to long and short films of the new wave of Romanian cinema, which has been attracting the attention of the international awards circuit since the early 2000s. Its realistic tone – sometimes acid, sometimes sensitive – is one of the hallmarks of the works of the country’s contemporary wave, led by great talents of Eastern European cinema.
The Doc Highlight program encompasses three feature films and positions itself at the center of this year’s Focus Country section, serving as a window into Romanian culture through its directors’ attentive eyes.
This special program aims to highlight the power of a narrative based on real events, as well as the talent and creativity of the region’s directors.
Acasă, My Home
Radu Ciorniciuc | Romania, Finland, Germany | 2020 | DOC. | 85’ | SUB. PT/EN
The Soviet Garden
Dragoș Turea | Moldova, Romania | 2019 | DOC. | 76’ | SUB. PT/EN
The Distance Between Me and Me
Mona Nicoară, Dana Bunescu | Romania, USA | 2018 | DOC. | 89’ | SUB. PT/EN
The Competition for Short Experimental Film serves as a platform for works and filmmakers that are focused on narrative, conceptual, and technical experimentation.
The program presents the liberty of play in terms of aesthetics, technical limits, and semiotic boundaries while breaking the popular standard discourse.
With 10 selected titles, the experimentalEAST reflects on the freedom of responding to the need of exploring cinematic horizons and finding genuine ways to create audiovisual art.
ALEPH ZETA ( XVII ): The Star
Ana Buljan | Croatia | 2019 | EXP. | 12’ | SUB. PT/EN
An apple, three toasts, a yogurt
Anita Čeko | Croatia | 2019 | EXP. | 9’ | SUB. PT/EN
Diaľnica desať
Jozef Eduard Masarik | Switzerland | 2019 | EXP. | 8’ | SUB. PT/EN
Dune
Gabor Ulrich | Hungary | 2019 | EXP. | 4’ | SUB. PT/EN
Maternity
Nataliya Ilchuk | Ukraine | 2019 | EXP./DOC | 17’ | SUB. PT/EN
Phoney Sights
Ana Čigon | Slovenia | 2019 | EXP./DOC | 19’ | SUB. PT/EN
Shooting Stars
Magda Jaroszewicz | Germany | 2019 | EXP. | 17’ | SUB. PT/EN
The Close River
Marta Hryniuk | Poland | 2020 | EXP./DOC | 28’ | SUB. PT/EN
Unfold
John Graham | Canada | 2019 | EXP. | 6’ | SUB. PT/EN
Where The Sun Never Lights
Terezie Unzeitigová | Czech Republic | 2020 | EXP. | 12’ | SUB. PT/EN
Through the EAST DOC Competition for Short & Medium-Length Documentary, selected works stand as clear windows towards real stories and the tumultuous New East.
The official selection presents compelling narratives through carefully crafted titles with an exciting range of creativity and dedication in examining the subject.
The program includes 4 titles inviting the viewer to discover through the eyes of young emerging filmmakers from the region.
A Cat Is Always Female
Martina Mestrovic, Tanja Vujasinovic | Croácia | 2019 | DOC. | 16’ | SUB. PT/EN
INVISIBLE PARADISE
Daria Yurkevich | Bielorrússia | 2019 | DOC. | 52’ | SUB. PT/EN
Pure art
Maxim Shved | Polónia | 2019 | DOC. | 52’ | SUB. PT/EN
Time is
Zaur Kourazov | Bélgica | 2019 | DOC. | 21’ | SUB. PT/EN
Twelve titles are selected for the EAST WAVE Competition for Short & Medium-Length Film, representing a new generation of young talents and exhibiting enthralling narratives, an ode to creative approach in storytelling.
Through powerful, sometimes provocative gazes, the selected works tackle topics and situations through a wide scope of types of the fiction genre.
The program brings forth a special selection of recent films made in the Central & Eastern Europe context, with a highly curated line-up, aimed towards supporting young promising directors.
ESCAPE VELOCITY
Tamás Rebák | Hungary | 2019 | FIC. | 8’ | SUB. PT/EN
FIREWORKS
Nikita Grushin | Russia | 2020 | FIC. | 19’ | SUB. PT/EN
LISTEN PAPA!
Olga Poliektova, Tatiana Poliektova | Russian Federation | 2019 | FIC. | 13’ | SUB. PT/EN
NINA
Hristo Simeonov | Bulgaria | 2019 | FIC. | 19’ | SUB. PT/EN
NOT ALIVE YET
Liene Rubane | Latvia | 2020 | FIC./DOC | 6’ | SUB. PT/EN
PROM NIGHT
Gvozden Ilić | Servia | 2019 | FIC. | 20’ | SUB. PT/EN
SH_T HAPPENS
Michaela Mihalyi, David Štumpf | Czech Republic | 2019 | FIC. | 13’ | SUB. PT/EN
SUMMER FRUITS
Josip Lukic | Croacia | 2019 | FIC. | 20’ | SUB. PT/EN
THE BED OF PROCRUSTES
Andrian Împărățel | Romania | 2018 | FIC. | 18’ | SUB. PT/EN
THE NEWS
Lorin Terez | Albania | 2020 | FIC. | 23’ | SUB. PT/EN
THE TURTLE CAVE
Klaudia Folga | Poland | 2019 | FIC. | 20’ | SUB. PT/EN
TO THE STARS
Štefánia Lovasová | Slovakia | 2019 | FIC. | 19’ | SUB. PT/EN
This year, sections such as EastWave, EastDoc, experimentalEAST, Focus Country, and V4 Screen will be available online through the streaming platform Filmin Portugal, between March 24th and April 4th.
The structure of the festival was designed to enable a diverse collection of films within the scope of the official competition and special programs. The EastWave program, for instance, aims to support young rising directors, bringing forth the best short and medium-length fiction films of the last two years made in an Eastern Europe context.
Moreover, the EastDoc section stands as a clear view of the New East’s culture, taking into consideration the delicate work around constructing motion pictures based on reality. The experimentalEAST program, on the other hand, aims to defy audiovisual standard rules, looking for directors who were able to create their own. These three categories form the Official Competition, which has functioned as the core of BEAST International Film Festival since its first edition.
Furthermore, the Focus Country section will be paying homage to Romania this year, which debuts at the Opening Session one of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2020: “Ivana The Terrible“, director Ivana Mladenović’s second feature.
Finally, the V4 Screen program highlights feature-length films from the V4 countries, as part of a project co-financed by the governments of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia through the International Visegrad Fund in collaboration with various cultural institutions.
Stay tuned to our website and social media to know all about the films featured in our program. This year, stay online with us – here, there, and everywhere.
A young woman uses therapy and the film medium to reflect upon multiple dimensions of her experience with juvenile depression.
Claudia Alexandru is a young filmmaker who graduated from the Film Studies program of Babeș-Bolyai University. Currently, she is enrolled in the Performance Arts and Film MA program. Her breakthrough film, ‘Hellen’, was coordinated by the Romanian film director Radu Jude, and was selected for the Gijon Film Festival.
Because of the socio-political changes in post-1989 Romania, Irina’s mother is forced to move abroad for work, so that her family makes ends meet. While travelling to Bucharest, Irina and her father argue about this situation and its devastating effects, just to unground unexpected truths. (Awards: Best Film in Local Competition of Transilvania International Film Festival)
Andra Salaoru is a Romanian photographer and videographer based in Cluj-Napoca. She has a BA degree in Cinematography and Media and a MA degree in Performance Arts and Film at the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. She was nominated at the TIFF Awards for her first short movie ‘Emigrants’ where she won the ‘Local Competition Award’.
A woman fights with an ugly disease. Her story is the story of a lot of people these days. Speranta refers to cancer as a ‘knife that is always overhead’ and reality is tough and painful. For almost a year and half, the director was the observer of each hospitalization and treatment that are followed by endless hours of phone conversations between my Speranta and her friends. A documentary exploring a sensitive subject where faith, illness, happiness, and friendship come together under one name, Hope (Speranța).
(Festival selections: Transilvania International Film Festival, Tbilisi International Film Festival, DocuArt)
Sandra Rad graduated from the Film, Photography and Media program at Babeș-Bolyai University with a short film, ‘Fragment 22’, which was selected for the Official Short Film Competition of Transilvania International Film Festival. Afterwards, she focused on documentary filmmaking choosing the specific MA program of BBU.
The afternoon dialogue of two street performers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As it turns out, wearing masks is not a new phenomenon.
Szitai Eszter is a Transylvania-based young animator and film director. She won the title of the Young Filmmaker Talent of the year in 2018, Young photographer of the year in 2020 and the 3rd place at the International Scientific Student Conference with her research about the Utopias, Dystopias and Heterotopias in the context of the postmodern series in 2019. Currently, she is working as a graphic designer and illustrator.
