One World Romania Film Festival: edition no. 10
In 2017 the One World Romania International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival celebrates its 10th edition. Between the 13th and 19th of March over 50 documentaries, selected from over 1300 submissions, will be screened in Bucharest in cinemas Elvire Popesco, Eforie and Union. In addition, during the entire week, several side events such as debates, workshops and exhibitions will take place.
We were curious about the festival’s subject, structure and the side events that the One World Romania team is preparing for this year’s edition. Alexandru Solomon, the festival’s director has agreed to answer to some of our questions and to let us take a sneak peek into the plans they have for everyone willing to come to the festival in March.
Why is fear the festival’s main theme in 2017, for its 10th edition? Why now?
Because everybody seems dominated by fear more and more nowadays and also by people who make use of the fear’s consequences. All kinds of populism speculate fear of others, fear of poverty, of losing one’s identity, fear of destruction of the traditional values. The icons of this populism can be found in the “Political Animals” section. “Against the stream” is the second section and it speaks about the ones who fight against this populism. Fear puts its roots down and is fueled ever since childhood; for this reason we collected movies in a section named “Fear’s Games”. And this is not all.
Why is the Russian doll, matryoshka, the symbol of this year’s edition?
Once the mechanism of fear settles down, a smaller fear is continuously replaced by a bigger, scarier one. The ten Russian dolls swallow one another in the festival’s official promo video and each of them is the representation of a fear. But the biggest doll – the one who swallows every other one – is a smiling doll, capable of assimilating and soothing the others. Exactly as good documentaries do. On the other hand, as the festival reaches it’s 10th edition and One World Romania got bigger and bigger each and every year, we thought that the ten dolls illustrated by Alexandru Ciubotariu and animated by Tudor Om in the festival’s promo video could be a symbol of this growth, too.
What can you tell us about the special projections for students and teachers? What will the kids learn after taking part in this event?
One World Romania at School is a program of our association that takes place all year round. During the festival, we organize the High school Jury and special projections for high school students because we believe that creative documentaries can become a very useful tool for education. These documentaries open new doors to the world, form the kids’ civic sense and they are also a perfect exercise for the critical spirit. All these movies invite you to take a walk in someone else’s shoes and to judge things by yourself, while empathizing. Do you know a better, more captivating remedy for any kind of fear?
For the ones willing to spend a week in cinema between the 13th and 19th March, please find out that the first festival passes for One World Romania can already be bought from here.
Photographer and editor; she co-founded Dissolved Magazine together with Melissa. For Films in Frame she gathers film and TV series recommendations for lazy weekends and she writes about interesting projects from the film industry. Other than that, she likes traveling, chilling with her cats and sleeping.