CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE (competition)

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the competitive section dedicated to documentaries focusing on the so-called Eastern Bloc. The reason for its coming into existence is linked to Astra Film’s mission of promoting the production and forming an audience for non-fiction cinema in this part of Europe, where creative documentaries can and must play an important part in revealing the particular realities of this area after the collapse of communism.
Our wish was to celebrate with many evens and meetings with the filmmakers whose films have been shown on our screens throughout the years, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, we have to move online and invite our audiences to view the 10 films in the final selection, produced / co-produced in Armenia, Belarus, Estonia, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Hungary. The films in the selection are about bizarre happenings during the communist years, about anti-heroes who had the courage to stand up to the terror of totalitarianism, the aftermaths of transition, dictators of past and of present times, and last but not least about the power of art and the artist in confronting those who seek power at all costs.

Showing all 10 results

  • As long as you still have arms

    Luisa Bäde • Germany • 2020 • 93′

    In a studio room filled with puppets, we meet Frank Karbstein. He remembers the 1980s in the German Democratic Republic, when Frank’s puppeteer group is arrested for distributing pacifist leaflets. After being sentenced to imprisonment, the defendants are offered the opportunity to go to the West through a secret buy-out of political prisoners. Frank remains. As does the question of who betrayed them? And why?

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • On A Clear Day You Can See the Revolution From Here

    Emma Charles, Ben Evans James • United Kingdom, Kazakhstan • 2020 • 64′

    An expansive journey through the Kazakh steppe, the documentary excavates layers of myth, history and geology to reveal the shifting fault lines between a government, its people and their land. The film brings into focus Kazakhstan’s search for a post-Soviet identity and a state-sponsored programme of cultural production that on the one hand connects back to the ancient folklore and belief systems of the Silk Road, while on the other, seeks to embrace the values of Western capitalism.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • Order and Soul

    Zsuzsanna Bak • Hungary • 2019 • 50′

    Regina Mundi is the only surviving Cistercian community whose inextinguishable faith became even more powerful under communism and through the problems their religious order faced. Whilst members of other denominations were taken in for questioning and other individuals from apostolic groups were imprisoned, the sorors at Regina Mundi were still leading monastic lives when the authorities finally began to note their suspicions in 1967. How did the sisters react when they were finally confronted by the police?

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • Promoting Success

    Aleksey Sukhovey • Russia • 2019 • 61′

    Several dozens of soldiers in the military echelon are transporting an exhibition with captured weapons from Syria across entire Russia. Musicians of military ensembles accompany this celebration. In each city, thousands of spectators meet them. People dance, take pictures. Children swear allegiance to their Motherland.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • Pure art

    Maksim Shved • Poland, Belarus • 2019 • 52′

    A mysterious artist appears in different districts of Minsk. He spreads his canvass and begins to paint. Curious passers-by spontaneously approach the painter and ask him questions about his work. The man never reveals what he is actually painting – he just replies with a question. He asks them what they see on the canvas. Art becomes an excuse to talk about life, the every-day reality, the state, social issues and human stories. Together, they reveal the secret of the “last dictatorship of Europe”.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • Return to Epipo

    Judit Oláh • Hungary • 2020 • 94′

    Back in the late 1980s, many Hungarian youngsters dreamed of a holiday at a unique summer camp, to a realm of role-playing and magic. The charismatic leader of Epipo cast a spell over the children, yet behind their innocent games lurked the shadow of humiliation and concealed abuse. Director Judit Oláh reunites with her former companions in an attempt to understand how Epipo’s insular and mysterious world of dark secrets is still a part of them all.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • The Diviners

    Roman Bordun • Ukraine • 2019 • 60′

    The main characters of the film are the inhabitants of the contemporary Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv. Their reality is multi-layered, unvarnished, deprived of unambiguous interpretations of good and evil, humanity and cruelty, charity and indifference. This story is a kaleidoscope, which features all of us: the righteous, the merciless, the funny, the naïve and the honest.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • The Free University

    Jonathan Hunter • Hungary • 2019 • 54′

    Imagine waking up as an “enemy of the people.” This was the reality waiting for students and staff of Central European University (CEU) as a coordinated legal and media apparatus began to demonise and eventually criminalise the Hungarian-American institution. The film follows students of CEU as they struggle against their exile by an increasingly authoritarian government. We follow their stories in a backsliding democracy and the consequences of democratic “red lines” being crossed with impunity.

    PREMIERĂ NAȚIONALĂ

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  • The Makavejev Case or Trial in a Movie Theater

    Goran Radovanovic • Serbia • 2019 • 73′

    In 1971, director Dušan Makavejev became a festival darling after his docu-fiction WR: Mysteries of the Organism screened at the Berlinale and in Cannes. But this wild and explicit film was met with outrage in Tito’s Yugoslavia. A „public court trial” was staged in a Novi Sad cinema, where the screening of the film was followed by a debate between film professionals and low-level Communist Party members. Here is the story of this outrageous „trial”.

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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  • Village of Women

    Tamara Stepanyan • Armenia, France • 2019 • 81′

    Armenia, a village called Lichk where only women, children and the elderly reside. Men leave nine months of the year to Russia to work. How do these women endure waiting, loneliness, and the absence of their husbands? I film their life and intimacy, become a confidante, hear and share their frustrations, joys and desires. (Tamara Stepanyan)

    ROMANIAN PREMIERE

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