email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

ASTRA 2016

Sieranevada opens Astra Film Festival

by 

- Cristi Puiu's Cannes contender opens Romania's largest documentary event, taking place in Sibiu

Sieranevada opens Astra Film Festival
Sieranevada by Cristi Puiu

The 23rd Astra Film Festival (AFF – 17-23 October) in Sibiu opened last night with a special screening of Cristi Puiu's Sieranevada [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Cristi Puiu
film profile
]
. The film world-premiered in Cannes competition this year and is the Romanian candidate for the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Film.

Puiu has a rather particular relationship with the AFF, one that began exactly one decade ago this year. The encounter between the two was hardly a surprise, since Puiu’s interest in documentary film is no secret, and apparent in his work.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

“Documentary film is the poor relative of cinema,” the filmmaker said in an interview. "It is as good as abandoned in the back yard. Personally, I don’t believe that there is documentary and there is fiction. For me, there’s only cinema.”

Puiu has been a constant jury member at the AFF for the last nine years, and this year he will be joined by film curator Claire Aguilar, film critic Claire Aguilar, the director of the Balkan Documentary Center, Martichka Bozhilova, Sight&Sound's web editor Nick Bradshaw, festival programmers Sara Garcia Villanueva (Play-Doc, Spain), Barbara Orlicz-Szczypula (Krakow Film Festival), Julia Tiechmann (dok.fest, Munich) and Veton Nurkollari (DokuFest Prizren), author and theorist Michael Stewart, filmmaker Vlad Petri, and producer Alexander Weiss.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy