BEAST IFF

Synopsis

The day-to-day life in quarantine is placed under the ‘loupe’ and the boundaries of private life are distorted, resulting in a cluster of uncomfortable, candid, or amusing situations, filmed mostly on a phone. An ode is paid to the house as the longest witness of the family, a reflection on the past, a place of fight and love, of fear and security. (Awards: The Best Short Film, Gijón International Film Festival 2020)

BIOGRAPHY

Agata Olteanu is a third-year student at Babeș-Bolyai University, specializing in film directing. In these former years, she experimented with many theoretical and practical concepts from which resulted in music videos, photography series, an art installation, and many other experiments. A constant presence at film festivals, from her high-school years on, she was involved in internships, workshops and volunteering.

• Agara Olteanu
• Romania
• 2020
• Doc.
• 11’
• Sub. PT/ENG

Synopsis

A young man finds an old photo camera which belonged to his grandfather and finds out that it contains an undeveloped film roll. While printing out some of the shots taken by his grandfather many years ago, strange things begin to happen under the red light of the darkroom.

BIOGRAPHY

Szabo Ervin is a young filmmaker, director, producer, and founder of the ERVA BROS. STUDIO production company. He directed his first short film, ‘Reverie’, for his bachelor’s degree diploma at the film school. Besides short films, he is currently involved in commercials and music video production.

• ERVIN SZABO
• Romania
• 2020
• Fic.
• 17’
• Sub. PT/ENG

Synopsis

Inspired by a personal crisis from when the director was finishing her first feature, Ivana the Terrible introduces Ivana (Mladenović), a Serbian actress based in Bucharest, as she arrives by train in her native town, Kladovo, on the Serbian bank of the Danube. It soon becomes apparent that the young woman is not well, and even though the tests show nothing and the doctors insist she is actually fine, Ivana’s way of dealing with the crisis wreaks havoc on her family. An affair with a much younger man (Luka Gramic) and an unexpected offer to be the face of a local festival intended to celebrate the Serbian-Romanian friendship push Ivana even further into very troubled waters.

BIOGRAPHY

Ivana MLADENOVIC (1984, Serbia) studied Law in Belgrade and then moved to Romania where she studied film directing at the National School of Film and Theatre (UNATC) in Bucharest, receiving both her BA and MA. Her short student films were shown and awarded at various film festivals around the world. In 2012, Mladenovic’ first feature-length documentary Turn Off the Lights premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Documentary and Gopo Award for Best Romanian Documentary. In 2016 she made her debut as an actress in Radu Jude’s Scarred Hearts. Soldier. Story from Ferentari(2017) was her first fiction feature. With Ivana, the terrible she won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival and the Golden Pram at the Zagreb Film Festival. 

• Ivana Mladenović
• Romania, Serbia
• 2019
• Doc.
• 86’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

trailer

Synopsis

In a village in Chechnya a mother and a daughter speak about the return of an acquaintance.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Together with producers Ada and Alexandru Solomon, who have an even longer personal story with Nina, we embarked on this project of excavating the many layers of mythology and ideology that surround this unique, defiant figure in a country where before 1989 dissent was rare, where “Communist” became an unexamined dirty word in the first minutes of the Revolution, where Jewishness remains to this day a taboo subject, and “feminism” is a joke. We believe that Nina’s story teaches necessary lessons in a time when creative freedom is once again threatened by the rise of authoritarianism and extremism, surveillance returns as a tool for global repression and censorship, and the forces of nationalism bear down on more global, internationalist projects. (Mona Nicoară)

• Mona Nicoară, Dana Bunescu (Idea: Ada Solomon)
• Romania/USA
• 2018
• Doc.
• 89’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

trailer

Synopsis

Stimulated by his grandmother’s lethal illness and her memories of some mysterious agricultural experiments in the past, Moldavian filmmaker Dragoș decides to investigate why the cancer rate has increased in his home country lately and whether there is some connection between the fatal statistics and these secret scientific endeavours. This very personal documentary digs into rare found footage in order to portray the industrial shock imposed on Moldova by the Soviet State while unveiling the secret plan of Nikita Khrushchev to transform Moldova into the Soviet Garden through the application of atomic energy in agriculture.

BIOGRAPHY

Dragoș Turea was born in Chișinău, Moldova in 1980. Graduated in 2004 from the Chișinău Academy of Music, Theatre and Arts with a Master’s Degree in Film Directing. He made his debut with the documentary “Vasile Mămăligă”, awarded with the debut prize of The Union of Filmmakers from Moldova in 2007. He worked as a producer for Publika TV, Prime TV, Jurnal TV (2007-2015). In 2010 he started his biggest project to date, the feature-length documentary film production ”The Soviet Garden”.

• Dragoș Turea
• Moldova, Romania
• 2019
• Doc.
• 76’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

trailer

Synopsis

A family with many children has lived in the swamps of Bucharest’s nature reserve for many years. One day, their life undergoes a dramatic change. Pursuant to the city’s land development plan, the residents must move to a flat in an apartment building that is offered to them. The transition becomes a true revolution for the family, in particular for the children who, accompanied by numerous domestic animals, have lived close to nature so far. Their sanitary conditions improve, but at the same time, they have to deal with school duties and other issues caused by a different lifestyle, which have been unknown to them until then.

BIOGRAPHY

Radu Ciorniciuc is a film director, producer and investigative reporter. In 2012 he co-founded the first independent media organization in Romania – Casa Jurnalistului, a community of reporters specialized in in-depth, long-form and multimedia reporting. He has been working as a long-form writer and undercover investigative reporter. His researches are focused on human rights, animal welfare and environmental issues across the globe. His work was published on most of the major international media organizations in the world: The Guardian, Al-Jazeera, Channel 4 News, etc. and received national and international awards.

• Radu Ciorniciuc
• Romania, Finland, Germany
• 2020
• Doc.
• 85’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

trailer

Synopsis

A music video based on found footage, 2D and 3D animation and hand-drawn textures take us on a walk through an imaginary landscape where statues are brought to life, walls disappear and the darkness becomes light.

BIOGRAPHY

Terezie Unzeitigova (1992) is a filmmaker with roots in illustration and animation. She’s interested in topics such as landscape, architecture, environment and industrialisation. She combines analogue techniques with digital post-production in 2D and 3D.

• Terezie Unzeitigova
• Czech Republic
• 2020
• Exp.
• 12’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

trailer

director’s intro

Synopsis

UNFOLD is a poetic laboratory that visually symbolizes the unpredictable revealing of oneself to another in friendship.

BIOGRAPHY

John Graham is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist. His ever-broadening art practice spans many media including independent filmmaking. His 9 experimental short films have been screened at over 185 film festivals worldwide in 38 countries. Many of these films have won awards.

• John Graham
• Canada
• 2019
• Doc.
• 6’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

Synopsis

Shot over the course of three weeks, in various locations in western Ukraine, The Close River is a poetic investigation of a region with multiple overlapping temporalities of colonisation and exploitation. The film traces shifting borders and markers of power, exploring how the histories of coexistence, violence and resistance are carved into the landscape and culture of the region, and ultimately how they shape contemporary ways of living.

BIOGRAPHY

Marta Hryniuk was born in 1991 in Warsaw and lives and works in Rotterdam. She graduated from the Academy of Arts in Szczecin and the Piet Zwart Institute. She has participated in exhibitions in Poland and abroad, amongst others in Forum Expanded Berlinale (2018). Holder of the “O&O, CBK” (2019) grant, “Young Poland” (2017) scholarship as well as one from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2015).

Between 2013-2017 has co-run an artist-run space and nomadic collective Silverado. In 2018 co-founded WET– a Rotterdam-based production and distribution cooperative for film, video and artists’ moving image. Her videos are part of the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art database.

• Marta Hryniuk
• Poland
• 2020
• Exp./Doc.
• 28’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

director’s intro

Synopsis

It’s a midnight song about masculinity, joy and rivalry. The starting point is an observation, through which I am near a picture searching for stories, that ultimately emerge in one’s head. That night is a different one.

BIOGRAPHY

Magda Jaroszewicz was born in 1986 and raised in Warsaw, Poland. As a teenager, she spent a year in Australia. Back in Europe, she studied script and playwriting in Poland and France, then she graduated from Theater and Performing Arts Studies in Cracow as well as film directing in the National Film School in Lodz. Her short fiction films “The Death of a Czech Dog” (2011) and “Wild Berries” (2016) were screened at various European film festivals.

After finishing film school she moved to Berlin. Recently she researched and co-directed a Polish part of a huge project for ARTE – 24 Hours Europe. She is a scholar of the ‘Haus am See’ program where she develops her first feature film and a Berlinale Talents 2019 alumni (Script Station). She likes to combine both mediums – documentary and fiction – and is interested in identity transitions and what does the past do with the living. She has a dog.

• Magda Jaroszewicz
• Germany
• 2019
• Exp.
• 17’
• Sub. PT/ENG

FILMIN

director’s intro