One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival

The 10th edition of the festival has recently come to a close.

Corina Sabău, 08.04.2017, 14:33

“Normal Autistic Film”, a documentary made by the Czech filmmaker Miroslav Janek, is the award-winning production of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival, an event whose 10th edition has recently come to a close. “We believe the production we’ve selected does not limit itself to the world of autistic children alone, but it conveys a message to all of us. What we can learn from these children is to value our own distinctiveness. By selecting this film, we actually took the courage to show who we really are. Everyone’s normality turns out to be different. Through various frames and characters, the film reveals the fact that there is no such thing as one single reality, but different perspectives on that”. That was the rationale of the judging panel made up of high-school students who bestowed the prize after the screening of the 10 films that entered the competition.

Filmmaker Miroslav Janek, who only managed to be in Bucharest when the festival began, offered a thank-you video recording to members of the judging panel and filmgoers. Fear was the main theme at the 10th edition of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival. “We live in a global world, yet we tend to return to times past, to establish new borders, to shut ourselves behind walls. Corrupt politicians from all over the world take advantage of our weaknesses and fears and seize power by exploiting them. Some of us are more determined to go against the flow, sacrificing all they’ve got. The films screened during the One World Romania festival explore the origin of our fears and how we can overcome them.

Here is One World Romania director Alexandru Solomon with details on that: ”At this edition, fear stood out of all the other themes related to politics, to the general atmosphere, which, since we had started the selection, got worse all around the world. And it’s mainly about the fear linked to populist, nationalist, homophobic trends. But it’s about more specific topics as well, such as problems related to dysfunctions in Romania’s healthcare system but also in other countries, problems that in turn fuel our fears.”

Debates bringing together filmgoers and guests in the festival, just like in the previous editions, were very interesting, and some of them had to conclude only because of the following screening, according to the timetable. The festival progressed as civil society itself progressed, just as the concern grew more intense for the fight against corruption and for freedom of expression.

Here is One World Romania director Alexandru Solomon, once again: ”The festival’s managing board has made its position clear all throughout these years in this respect and we rely heavily on NGOs and associations that can adopt a documentary, an documentary that could support their cause, a film that can speak about the problems they raise. So the documentary film can also be viewed as some sort of market, a market of ideas where filmmakers, NGOs and civil society meet. Notwithstanding, the role of a documentary is not that of solving various problems. What the documentary film is capable of achieving, as compared to mainstream media, is the presentation of a more insightful image, viewed also from a more sympathetic perspective, that of the society we live in, as documentary filmmakers are people who spend a lot of time in the company of ‘ideas’, approaching the people they film in a very special way. And also in comparison with the media, directors of documentary films are a little less pressed for time and necessities. It is quite visible that we managed to start a dialogue, within the One World Romania Festival. Furthermore, the public has become more open, more capable of expressing their opinions, as compared to what happened 9 years ago, when the festival began.”

The 10th edition of the One World Romania International Documentary Film and Human Rights Festival short-listed 6 Romanian productions, three of which were screened in the “Romania on the move” section, while three other projects which are still works in progress were screened in the “Romania Work-in-progress” section. As part of the festival, Claudiu Mitcu and Ileana Bîrsan presented an edited fragment of “The Trial” a documentary film tracing the case of Mihai Moldoveanu, a former officer in the Romanian Army who had to serve a 25-year prison sentence because of a murder about which he was adamant in stating he did not commit.

With details on that, here is Ileana Bârsan: ”We wanted to see whether this topic was of any interest to anyone and if the fragment we edited and which is part of our film, is actually working. We try to present this case in as balanced a way as possible. We wanted to get feedback also because our film has only one character, as we were denied access to other voices. It was not our fault, as people in the system, prosecutors and judges, who were involved in previous trials or in the new one, declined our invitation to dialogue. The most difficult part was to think out a film with one single character, and to refrain from providing our own take on all that. In the 20 minute long fragment we have presented we tried to select stuff which was coherent but also intriguing, yet without providing the entire information, at once being unbiased. It was a useful exercise, the attempt also helped us with the final editing.”

More than 11,000 filmgoers went to the One World Romania Festival this year. Some of the productions screened during this year’s edition as well as some documentary films screened in previous editions have been included in the 2017 selection of the KineDok alternative distribution program.