When injustice is the system
A city forest can become a case study in how institutions work. In “A forest once stood here” (Valentin Anghel, 2026), the fight for IOR Park becomes the story of a community trying to protect a place dear to the people of Bucharest. “The spies among us” (Jamie Coughlin Silverman, Gabriel Silverman, 2025) shows how the traces of the Stasi surveillance apparatus reach into a family, while “The exported: the dark trade of the Cold War” (Pierre Goetschel, 2025) reconstructs the mechanism through which the Romanian communist state secretly negotiated the emigration of its own citizens. “Child trafficking” (Olivier Ballande, 2026) takes the story of institutional abuse as far as child trafficking on a European scale. Four films, four situations in which injustice is part of the very system that should protect us.
Places that make us, places that erase us
Did you know that in the coldest city on Earth, the crime rate rises as temperatures fall? Or that an apartment can become, through the succession of people who visit it, a portrait of an entire society? The films “An awesome flat” (Gabriela Isabel Gómez de Arteche Núñez, Alejandra Llorens, Daniel Pérez Valderrama, Camila de Lucas, Jaime Marqués Cordero, 2025), “The black blizzard” (Mira Erkenova, 2025), “Total life forever” (Sebastian Molina Ruiz, 2025) and “Where silence Is heard” (Gabriela Pena, Picho García, 2026) each look differently at the relationship between people and the places where they live. Because places leave traces on people, too.
Sister gaze
Who else but a sister can look so closely at a brother’s life? “If pigeons turned to gold” (Pepa Lubojacki, 2026) follows a young woman trying to save her brother from drug addiction. “The golden swan” (Anette Ostrø, 2026) turns cinema into a form of mourning, while “From dawn to dawn” (Xisi Sofia Ye Chen, 2026) tries to see the human being behind a crime.
War under the skin
War is not fought only on the front line. In “Traces” (Alisa Kovalenko, Marysia Nikitiuk, 2026) and “Here, elsewhere” (Comes Chahbazian, 2026), the body becomes one of the targets of war, while autonomy over one’s own life is called into question. At the same time, “Birds of war” (Janay Boulos, Abd Alkader Habak, 2026) brings a story you would not expect to find in a section about war: two journalists reporting from the conflict in Syria fall in love and get married. Even in the midst of war, people continue to live, love and imagine a future.
Shift your perspective!
What does the world feel like to someone who cannot hear? How might animals see us? What would it be like to live, as an adult, in a tree house? “Signs from below” (Maude Vuillez, 2025), “Amma, do giraffes cry?” (Kartikeya Saxena, 2026), “IMAGO” (Déni Oumar Pitsaev, 2025) and “An awesome flat” (Spain, 2025) ask us to take a step sideways and look at the world from a place we have not occupied before. Sometimes, to see differently, you do not need to learn something new; you only need to change the position from which you look.
Some protest, while others make changes themselves
What do you do when something does not work? You can protest. But you can also roll up your sleeves and change it. In “Lenin’s pawn” (Dragoș Turea, 2026), an actor from the Republic of Moldova literally dismantles the remnants of Soviet ideology. In “Power station” (Daniel Edelstyn, Hilary Powell, 2026), a British couple turns their street into a community powered by solar energy. And “80 angry journalists” (András Földes, Anna Kis, 2026) follows dozens of independent journalists in Hungary who defend their profession and refuse to become instruments of propaganda. These are stories about people trying to move the world, even if only a little.
Fathers and sons
“Confessions of a swedish man” (Hampus Linder, 2026) follows a single father, a self-described feminist, who attends an anti-feminist camp to understand the anger and loneliness behind the men’s rights movement. In “Unconditional?” (Frank de Rooij, 2026), a psychiatrist convinced that running can heal trauma struggles with his own difficulty accepting his overweight son. Two films that move the discussion about “what a man should be” from the realm of slogans into the far more complicated space of family.
Can we heal transgenerational trauma?
Can we inherit things we never lived through? “Something familiar” (Rachel Taparjan, 2026) searches for the origins of behavioural patterns that repeat from one generation to the next. “Last letters from my Grandma” (Olga Lucovnicova, 2025) returns to a family history in an attempt to understand difficulties that, without this past, seemed inexplicable. And “If pigeons turned to gold” (Pepa Lubojacki, 2026) shows how a brother’s addiction can also become the story of a sister trying to understand, repair and save.
No guide to adult life
Is there a manual for adult life that we all somehow missed? The films in this section seem to say no. In “From dawn to dawn” (Xisi Sofia Ye Chen, 2026), a young Chinese immigrant in Spain tries to build an ordinary life, but the past keeps pulling him back. In “The golden swan” (Anette Ostrø, 2026), a young Norwegian artist travels to India with big dreams and is killed in Kashmir. “IMAGO” (Déni Oumar Pitsaev, 2025) and “Confessions of a mole” (Mo Tan, 2025) set ideas about adulthood held by filmmakers trained in the West against the expectations of their families in the Caucasus and China. And “A fire there” (Marlene Edoyan, 2026) follows three friends caught between the life they inherited and the future they imagine.
Living Mountain
Did you know that pastoralism can tell a story about the future of food and the way we inhabit the land? The Living Mountain is a thematic section built around a question: who will still be able to live in the mountains, and what needs to remain possible for this way of life to continue? “Grass: a nation battle for life” (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, 1925) takes us to the mountains of Persia; “To hold a mountain” (Biljana Tutorov, Petar Glomazić, 2026) follows a shepherdess in Montenegro defending her pastures from being turned into a military training ground; while “On the road” (Dumitru Budrala, 1997) and “Milky Way” (Dumitru Budrala, 2026) introduce us to the lives of Romanian shepherd families. In “Sweet Grass”, shepherds in Montana set out on one of the last drives to the mountains, while “Wool man sheep” (Walter Aigner, 2026) asks why tonnes of wool end up as waste and how they can become a resource again.
Women hold the world together
Some of the toughest battles of the present are fought in places where, until not long ago, women were not even expected to be. Alongside the heroine of “To hold a mountain” (Biljana Tutorov, Petar Glomazić, 2026), “Steps in silence” (Fariz Ahmadov, 2026) introduces us to women in Karabakh who defuse mines, while “Techplomacy” (Susanne Kovács, 2026) follows a confrontation with tech giants. Three films about work, territory, technology, power, and women who do not wait to be given a place.
AI Invasion
What would it be like to have a lover created by artificial intelligence? In “Replica” (Chouwa Liang, 2026), three young women explore how real a virtual romantic relationship can become. But AI has long since left the realm of science fiction: “All we say to each other” (Anton Augsten, Lea El Attal, 2026) asks what happens when an AI-based therapist tries to untangle our problems, while “How to Talk to Lydia?” (Rusudan Gaprindashvili, 2025) imagines a relationship with an AI boss. In “Elon Musk unveiled” (Andreas Pichler, 2025), failures in Tesla’s autopilot systems are linked to the training of artificial intelligence.
You can purchase the Astra Pass 10 at the Early Bird rate, offering ten entries to any event at AFF2026. Details: https://astrafilm.ro/festival/tickets
About Astra Film Festival
Founded in 1993, Astra Film Festival is the longest-running documentary film festival in Romania and one of Europe’s most important events dedicated to non-fiction cinema. The festival is included by the European Film Academy among the festivals eligible to make direct nominations for the European Film Awards. Astra Film Festival is a strategic cultural project of the Ministry of Culture, organized by Astra Film, CNM Astra and the Astra Film Foundation. The festival is held under the High Patronage of the President of Romania, co-funded by the Municipality of Sibiu and supported by the Sibiu County Council.
Institutional Partners: CNC, ICR, UNATC, UCIN, Sibiu State Philharmonic, DRRM, Dacin Sara
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