The shooting of the feature Grandpa Goes South by the director Vinci Vogue Anžlovar started on Friday, 21 August. All of us still remember Grandma Goes South (1991), in which the director sent the protagonist, played by Majolika Šuklje, to the seaside.

Grandpa Goes South - 2020

The film Grandpa Goes South is a story about life, expectations, and the search for meaning. It is a tale about friendship. Vlado kidnaps his best friend Boris from the hospital because he refuses to come to terms with the fact that Boris is dying. Boris and Vlado, both musicians, have known each other for many years, as they played together in a jazz orchestra. Vlado decides to take Boris to Serbia and reunite him with Neda, a woman that has been the focus of his unfulfilled love for many years and with whom he lost touch with years ago due to unfortunate circumstances. At first, everything goes according to the plan – until they cross paths with a Gypsy woman called Esma. From then on, life takes a different turn.

The 24th edition of Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries begins this week, taking place mostly in an online form from 29 August to 6 September. Baltic Sea Docs is the most important documentary training and pitching event in the Baltic countries, bringing together filmmakers from the wider Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe and Caucasus region. 

POLITICS

Public consultations launched by the European Commission.

The European Commission has launched three public consultations with regards to The Digital Services Act Package, the Impact Assessment for a possible New Competition Tool and the Community Competition Law. The CICAE is participating in them to make sure that the arthouse cinemas have a voice and that the small and medium sized businesses ran by exhibitors are taken into account in the discussions that will shape important aspects of the EU economy of the upcoming years.

European Funding for Cinemas

Venues of the network Europa Cinemas will receive at the beginning of 2021 a financial support dedicated to help compensate the losses due to forced closure during the pandemic. The amount of the financial support will be proportional to the number of weeks of closure of the venues.

ARTHOUSE INDUSTRY CURRENT ISSUES

AMC - Universal: Market power against diversity

The AMC - Universal deal, whereby the cinema chain accepts a 17-day cinema window in order to then participate in PremiumVoD revenues, is also about market power concentration. Christian Bräuer expresses his concern, because just like Uber, Amazon and Co., this deal is about crowding out the economically operating competition in order to be able to dictate its own terms. The concern here is for the smaller medium-sized cinemas, which will have ever greater problems with supplies and will no longer have a chance as copycats. But also the smaller distribution colleagues, whose access to the screens is also becoming increasingly restricted.

Even in the USA, there is now a political danger that entire industries will tend to monopolize. It is more important now that we in Europe define clear rules for the market and its access. The appeal is therefore made to politicians, film funders, but also the antitrust authorities in Europe and in each country to observe current developments and, where necessary, to take countermeasures.

ONLY 20 DAYS LEFT TO APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP!
Deadline: 11th September 2020

PITCHING EVENT FOR YOUNG TALENTS
developing new animation projects

The sixth edition of Cartoon Springboard will take place in Valencia, Spain, from 27 to 29 October 2020. It will be an excellent opportunity for the young talents of European animation schools to improve their animation project by pitching it in front of a panel of experts from the audiovisual world.

In preparation for this year's Kids Kino Industry, we're hosting a series of a free weekly Inspirational Webinars with industry professionals. The first webinar “Exploring The Change. Göteborg’s Film Festival Nostradamus Report Meets Kids Kino Industry” starts today at 15:00 CEST (GMT+2).

When: Every MONDAY from 24th August to 21st September
Where: ZOOM
Cost: FREE (register here)

We kick off our Inspirational Webinars with a dynamic session on the future of the children’s screen industry in the light of the COVID-19 crisis. Media analyst and author of the Nostradamus Report, Johanna Koljonen, will introduce us to the 2020 edition of CREATIVE EXPLOSION, discussing screen industry developments in the context of global macro trends including the pandemic. Focusing on the young audiences platform agnostic perception of the content she reflects on new possibilities for creators and distributors in terms of storytelling, audience relationship and releases.

The session will be joined and moderated by David Kleeman who brings in his analytic knowledge on how children make their choices around the media and what they are seeking in the near future.

Finally, Madiana Asseraf-Jacob from the European Broadcasting Union will guide us through an overview on how children’s public broadcasting have been shaping their formats and content during the pandemic and what the main lessons learnt from here in terms of their future programming are.

There is more to come!

Please check our lineup of the Inspirational Webinars, and don’t forget to register. Remember that you need to register for each seminar separately (apologies for this inconvenience!).

The upcoming webinars:

• 24th August, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “Exploring The Change. Göteborg’s Film Festival Nostradamus Report Meets Kids Kino Industry”
• 31st August, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “New Format in Kids TV”
• 7th September, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST, “Studio Presentation – Up-and-Coming Projects”
• 14th September, 12:00 – 13:00  CEST, “A Quantum Leap – Game Tech in Filmmaking”
• 21st September, 12:00 – 13:00 CEST, “Curse or Blessing, Co-Production in a Changed Environment”

More details and the registration form for each meeting can be found here.

This year's selection includes 21 Romanian documentaries which will be screened outdoors

Astra Film Festival 2020 has a hybrid format, outdoors and online, and brings to the public a program consisting of the best 80 Romanian and international documentaries, selected from 3,000 films submitted. Held under special conditions, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 27th edition of Astra Film Festival will be a unique experience since Sibiu and nature are turning into unique open-air cinema halls. AFF2020 will be organized in two parts: Astra Film Festival Open Air (4-13 September), with screenings in the historic center of Sibiu and in several locations at  Astra Museum, and Astra Film Festival Online (16-25 October), which will take place on the festival online platform, so the entire Romanian public will have access to documentaries.

Astra Film Festival Open Air comes with a selection of 21 new Romanian documentaries, most of them presented for the first time in Sibiu. The screenings will take place in the presence of the directors, who will have an open dialogue with the audience.

"Currently, the exercise of reflecting on what is happening around us has become increasingly important. The perspective and years of work that documentary directors put in, to bring to the screen slices of the realities around us, is invaluable.  These realities deserve to be known and lived through documentary film and thus we will have a much better understanding of the world in which we live in", said Dumitru Budrala, the founding director of Astra Film Festival.

The AFF 2020 format highlights the necessary protective measures for the festival to provide safe conditions for participants.

Romania, robbed blindly

The manifest documentary of the businessman Ștefan-Valentin Mandachi (#şîeu), "30 years and 15 minutes", which will be screened in Sibiu in the presence of the director, raises the issue of the lack of transport infrastructure and, implicitly, the irresponsibility of the authorities for the last 30 years. Attitudes that ranked Romania on the last place in Europe in terms of highway kilometers and on the first place in number of deaths due to traffic accidents.

Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan's film, "Wood" (2020) is an ecological thriller, which follows the illegal deforestation phenomenon in our country, revealing a global octopus of billions of euros.

The undigested stories of the communist past ("Nostalgia for the dictatorship", 2020 - Marius Th. Barna), The 1989 revolution - with a focus on the events in Sibiu ("Men with Wheels", 2019 - Cornel Mihalache) or the Chernobyl nuclear explosión ("Everything will not be fine", 2020 - Adrian Pîrvu & Helena Maksyom) are three themes that will surely produce emotion in the audience through the way they are staged.

On the other hand, the film "August 23, 1944/2019" (2020), by Andra Tarara, David Schwartz and Roland Ibold reveals the personal experience of four Romanian citizens of Jewish ethnicity, bringing a new perspective on this major historical event. And "Bugan - I didn't breathe the air in vain" (2019), by the Dutchman Duco Tellegen, exposes the incredible portrait of a Romanian political dissident from the communist period.

Unique destinies. Intimate stories presented for the first time

Ellen Fiske & Joanna Karlberg's film, "Josefin & Florin" (2019), a unique love story between Florin, a young Roma man who came to beg and Iosefin, a Swedish woman, will be presented for the first time in Romania. Themes such as re-establishing ties with parents and questioning them about the decision to abandon their parental responsibilities are strongly and emotionally articulated in the films of Andrei Dăscălescu (“Holy Father”, 2020) and Diana Nicolae & Nori Florentina Vito (“Come and find me ”, 2019).

"The Doll's House", 2020, the directorial debut of the image director Tudor Platon, is an incursion into a special universe - the annual vacation of 70-year-old women, who maintain the illusion that, for them, time has not passed and they remain the same young girls, beautiful and in love as 50 years ago. "Death… full stop or comma?" (2020), by Călin Terțan, exposes the impressive testimonies of people who have returned from clinical death.

Destinies influenced by places. The unheard voices of picturesque Romania

The spirit of the "Văcărești Delta", a special place on the outskirts of Bucharest, is evoked in two films ("Home, my home", 2020 - by Radu Ciorniciuc and "The Delta of Bucharest", by Eva Pervolovici 2020). These are movies that tell stories inspired by the real lives of people who live or have lived in this unique place. In his turn, Claudiu Mitcu prforms the radiography of the Lipovan family of fishermen from Sfântu Gheorghe, the famous town from the Danube Delta ("All rivers flow into the sea and the sea never fills.", 2020).

In the film "Reflexii în Est", directed by Andreea Bortun, we find portraits of women from the countryside, in a permanent struggle for survival, who face either domestic violence or are caught in the whirlwind of the need to leave the country and work abroad. The film "Between realms" by Maria Cinar-Jiga describes the emotional portrait of a young Ukrainian woman, who divides her time between school and traditional pastoral life practiced in her native village, in the bosom of her family. Alina Manolache's film, "Children Lost on the Beach" (2020) shows the subjective image of a generation who was born and raised in the "free years" after 1990 and has now reached adulthood.

The sweet Moldavian language

The film "I Genius Cioclea" (2019), directed by Violeta Gorgos, presents the portrait of the sensational poet Eugen Cioclea from Chisinau. And Pavel Cuzuioc's documentary, "Please, hold the line" (2020), gives us access to Moldavian homes and daily living through the installers of the internet company.

Astra Film Festival 2020 is organized by Astra Film, CNM Astra and Astra Film Foundation, with the support of Sibiu County Council, the Ministry of Culture and National Identity, the National Center of Cinematography, the Consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany in Sibiu and the Union of Filmmakers.
The event is co-financed by the Sibiu Local Council through the City Hall of Sibiu and by the European Union through the Creative Europe Program.

Astra Film Festival is placed under the High Patronage of the President of Romania.

Sponsors: Kaufland, HBO, Cinelab, Sonne Sibiu, Sibiu 100%

Communication partner: PiArt Vision

Media partners: Kiss FM, Magic FM, Rock FM, RFI, Radio România Cultural, Libertatea, HotNews, News.ro, Newsweek, Vice, PressHub, Euractiv, Revista Avantaje, All about Romanian Cinema, Cinemagia, MovieNews, Films in frames, LiterNet, IQads, Ziarul Metropolis, Turnul sfatului, Sibiu 100%, Tribuna, Zile și nopți, Ora de Sibiu, Mesagerul de Sibiu, Revista Transilvania, Capital Cultural, Cineeuropa, Filmtett, Hermanstadter Zeitung.