Astra Film

51/2 Roofs

Director: Sepp R. Brudermann
Country: U.K.
Year: 2006
Length: 84

According to Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 the occupation of empty property in the UK is not illegal. In London there are more than 13,000 people living in squats. With a poetic and sympathetic eye this film shows 6 episodes of 6 different London based squats and their inhabitants. 6 stories of the struggles and joys of life of the city, which is usually hidden to us.

Cold Waves

http://www.alexandrusolomon.ro/

Director: Alexandru Solomon(see interview )
Country: Romania/Germany/Luxembourg
Year: 2007
Length: 84

Cold Waves tells the story of the strange alliance between a nationalist-communist dictatorship and international terrorism. It is a film about the war between Radio Free Europe and the Ceasescu regime who went as far as hiring Carlos de Jackal to annihilate key-people who worked for the Free Europe Radio Station. The film also makes an analysis of the power of media in the modern world.

Divorce Albanian Style

http://adelamedia.net/

Director: Adela Peeva
Country: Bulgaria
Year: 2007
Length: 66

In 1961, after Albania broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Albanian men married to foreign women were forced to separate from their wives. This is a story about love and separation. Through the eyes of a few people who experienced this extraordinary period, the film tells the story of the many thousands of families that were forcibly separated by the totalitarian regime of Enver Hodja, the most long-lived European communist dictator of the 20th century. Thousands of women had to leave the country together with their children. Families were torn apart. Dreams and plans for the future were turned to ashes overnight. Those who stayed in Albania spent years in prison. The film tells the stories of three couples who lived throu this ordeal, and of those some officials and officers of the secret police who acted as instruments of these people’s persecution.

The Fat to Bed, the Slim to the Ball

Director: Konrad Szolajski
Country: Poland
Year: 2006
Length: 50

A fat woman’s life in a highly intolerant society is not a bed of roses. Indeed, a young fat woman will more likely end up in bed with a man rather than at a fancy restaurant. Yet, overweight women strive to find happiness, constantly struggling with obstacles they encounter almost every day.  The film was inspired by a website, www.XL-pozytywnie.pl,   aimed at raising public awareness on the issue of the increasing number of overweight persons in Poland.  The site offers advise on various subjects such as fashion, sports, mental health, and sex. The author of the website, Marta, has fought her own personal battle. The film offers an intimate insight of the difficulties she experienced as a teenager, and of her fight to acquire self-confidence

The Lost Village

Director: Manuel Jiménez Núñez
Country: Spain
Year: 2006
Length: 52

In an inhospitable place, on a marshland surrounded by woods, there is a hermitage surrounded by a centuries-old village. The village community performes every day ceremonies devoted to the Virgin. Their whole lives are built around protecting and venerating Holy Mary, whose image is kept in the hermitage. The film analyses the magnetism exerted by the cult of the Virgin on this small rural community and on the entire Catholic world.

Low Cost 110 E

Director: Nora Agapi, Stéphane Luçon
Country: France/ Romania
Year: 2006
Length: 52

The first Romanian documentary on the local impact of globalization brings together two groups of female-workers from two factories belonging to the same Franco-Romanian company. At one point, the French owner has to make a decision. Instead of firing a number of French workers, he offeres them a job at one of the company’s branches in Mediaş, Romania. The film analyses in honesty and empathy the meeting of the two cultures, deciding that there is not a question of a culture clash. The workers, be they French or Romanian, manage to establish communication, even if they do not speak the same language. After all, they are confronted with similar difficulties, and the low salaries payed by the employer is the most important of them all. The film does not attempt to reject globalization, nor to demonize employers on behalf of the employees. It is rather a discreet insight into people’s everyday joys and dissatisfactions.

Our Street

Director: Marcin Latałło
Country: France
Year: 2006
Length: 52

“Our Stret” is in Poland, in the city Lodz, which is far from what it used to be during the communist regime. It is a place where Old Europe meets New Europe. Right under the windows of the apartment inhabited by a Polish family of workers, who have lived there for five generations, a French investor built the Manufaktura, the largest shopping and entertainment centre in Central Europe. The centre has been built on the ruins of an industrial site, where all the members of the Furmanczyk family used to work in the times when Lodz was considered „the promised land”, one of the most prosperous European cities. The film documents the life of the Furmanczyks for three years, covering the period of Poland’s adhering to the EU and the opening of the centre. There is every-day struggle and few moments of happiness in a world of confusing economic changes.

One Voice one Vote

Director: Jeanne Paturle, Cécile Rousset
Country: France
Year: 2006
Length: 14

Documentary or animation? Apparently, we are dealing with two completely different genres. We can ultimately accept a “docu-fiction” genre, but how should it be possible to mix documentary and animation and still obtain an organic final product? Well, the filmmakers have found an original method to propose us an “animated documentary”!

Other Worlds

Director: Marko Škop(see interview )
Country: Slovakia
Year: 2006
Length: 78

In Eastern Europe, transition is a long, often painful process to a lot of people. Unemployment, identity crises, dezilusion – they are all effects of the economic and social transition. Marginal communities (i.e. Gipsies) are some of the most affected. Yet... why should we always notice only the dark side of the life, and not get funny now and then? Other Worlds is first of all a funny film, refusing toughness.

Sasha

Director: Romas Lileikis
Country: Lithuania
Year: 2006
Length: 42

The painful, dramatic years of changes. In Uzupis, a small nook of Vilnius, the name of which is already well known in the world. "The last bastion of Romanticism" - the pictorial place favoured by poets, artists, and photographs, "Montmartre of Vilnius" is becoming the outpost of aggressive pragmatism - in the eyes of indigene Sasha, and Laurynas, an Uzupis "Gavroche". The object of the film is a fragile and retreating world, still fluttering in the open palm of the banner of the U?upis Republic. In the centre of the film – the theme of home. The home that rises, the home that falls.

Small Town Girls

Director: Jill Daniels
Country: U.K.
Year: 2007
Length: 94

Joanne, Charlotte and Sian are not stars, they are anyone. Their lives were filmed every few months for five years. Three girls; two small towns; England north and west. In 2001 they are twelve, first years at school; in 2005 they are preparing for college. The changes they go through are intense, fascinating and very fast! Away from the bright lights of the big cities, they find their own entertainment, form new friendships and relationships; quarrel, fall out and make up. They live through economic depression, race riots and death. As the film unfolds, their behaviour and their relationships with their parents changes in surprising and sometimes tragic ways.

Sugartown: The Bridegrooms

Director: Kimon Tsakiris
Country: Greece/Germany
Year: 2006
Length: 82

“Funny social analysis” would be the most appropriate words describing this films that deals with the problem of women missing in a Greek village. The male population of the village has no other solution but to seek for women somewhere else. They try to solve this problem in a less usual way: to go to Ukraine in the mass in order to meet their future wives there…

The Shutka Book of Records

Director: Aleksandar Manić
Country: Czech Republic
Year: 2007
Length: 78

The inhabitants of Shutka, the Romany capital of the world, all share one common passion: being a champion. Shutka thrives on achieving records in songfests, goose fights, dog fights, and vampire hunts, in wearing Sunday best, collecting Turkish music or exterminating evil Genies. Through a number of intertwining stories, this playful, humorous film takes us into a world that is generally closed to outsiders. As the mosaic of Shutka unfolds, we are led to ask ourselves: Where lays the secret of joy? Aren’t the smallest things in life often those that make life such an unforgettable experience? Don’t look for Shutka on a geographical map. Shutka is a state of mind.

Two Sisters

Director: Jasna Krajinovič
Country: Belgium
Year: 2006
Length: 57

It’s been ten years since the Kosovo War is over. However, the wounds are still visible and the earth is still full of antipersonnel mines. The film speaks about two women who struggle to clean up the soil of the ordures of the war. It is a story of devotion, courage and most of all ideals in a world that has lost its ideals.

Village Romance

Director: Kriszta Bódis(see interview )
Country: Hungary
Year: 2007
Length: 53

The village was once settled by a community of lesbians seeking refuge from the city. Only a few families have remained. One of them lives in poverty but in a wealthy house. The mistress of the house falls in love with M., a miserable gypsy woman living next door. M. is an alcoholic. Her husband beats her regularly and wants to take away the children. The villagers despise her because of her gypsy descent. Despite the fact that M. is heterosexual, she reciprocates her neighbour's affection. "No one's ever loved me for who I am," she says. She can hardly wait for her husband to leave so she can take her three children and move in with the woman she loves.

With Much Love and Kisses

Director: Anastasia Cherkassova
Country: Russia
Year: 2006
Length: 61

Northern Russia. The Solovetskii Islands in the White Sea. An ancient monastery, turned into a concentration camp. Here, in the 1930s, famous philosophers, scholars, engineers and writers spent the last days of their lives. At the end of October and beginning of November 1937 more than one thousand prisoners were taken from the Solovetskii islands to the mainland and executed. But their letters to their loved ones were miraculously preserved. Seventy years later, the victims’ children and grandchildren come to the Solovetskii Islands to commemorate their fathers and grandfathers.