Sibiu is preparing for Astra Film Festival 2022. The organizers announce for September 3 and 4, i.e. the last weekend before the start of school, Warm-Up Astra Film, a teasing event for the festival that will take place between October 9-16. The program proposes spectacular encounters between human emotion and artificial intelligence and a discussion on education through film, thus marking the return of Astra Film Junior in this year's edition of the festival. The AFF Warm-Up will offer viewers films projected on a giant screen set between windmills, which can be seen from boats floating on the lake: " River" (Jennifer Peedom & Joseph Nizeti) and "Who made you?" (Iris Härmä).

Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.astrafilm.ro/ro/warm-up

" The festival returns this year in the cinema halls of Sibiu, between October 9-16. But until then, because we all loved the experience of outdoor screenings, we wanted to keep the movie viewings from boats floating on the lake. This is how the Warm-Up AFF event was born, which also gives an idea of what we are preparing for the festival. Astra Film was and will always be a platform at the confluence of the present and the future, between emotion and technology ," said Dumitru Budrala, director-founder of Astra Film Festival.

The first evening offers viewers a documentary film released three months ago, which has already made waves. It is about the Australian production "River" , made by Jennifer Peedom and Joseph Nizeti, recently designated as the Best International Documentary at the Florida Film Festival.

Featuring breathtaking satellite, drone and helicopter footage, featuring the unmistakable voice of William Dafoe and a soundtrack performed by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, featuring music ranging from JS Bach and Giuseppe Verdi to John Greenwood (Radiohead), from violinist Richard Tognetti to William Barton and his didgeridoo, "River" is a cinematic and musical odyssey, a documentary that explores the relationship between people and rivers that flow across six continents.

The movie "River" shows how, throughout history, humans have altered the course of every river on Earth and issues a warning: if they don't change their behavior and show respect for nature, humans will end up destroying the world. " Ultimately, we hope River will cause audiences to contemplate what it means to think like a river: to dream downstream, meaning ahead, of the long-term consequences of your actions," says director Jennifer Peedom .

The screening will be accompanied by several surprises and special guests, witnesses to the show of life and the world, who will make the evening unforgettable.

The film proposed for viewing from the boats on the second night of the AFF Warm-Up is "Who made you?" , made by Iiris Härmä (Finland). Honored with two major awards (Best Documentary at Raindance Film Festival, 2019, and "KI Science Film Award" at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Science Film Festival, 2019), the film takes a humanist perspective on the pressing subject of our era : the rapid development of technology and the transformations to come. Artificial intelligence is approached with pure curiosity and wonder, capturing, through the encounters between humans and robots and the visions expressed by researchers in the field, a glimpse of our near future.

" We are delighted that the public who will come to this special event will have the opportunity to see for the first time, from boats floating on the lake in the Astra Museum, exceptional films projected among windmills", said Ciprian Ștefan, general director of the Astra Museum from Sibiu.

The AFF Warm-Up will also include Documentary Cinema Focus for Adolescents, which involves two discussion modules in which emphasis will be placed on practicing the ability of adolescents to understand a documentary film and to speak in public, respectively to understand the process by which makes a documentary film. High school students (14-18 years old) will participate in the event, priority being given to AFF volunteers.

Tickets for the AFF Warm-Up can be found here: https://www.astrafilm.ro/ro/warm-up

About the Astra Film Festival

Astra Film Festival Sibiu, launched in 1993 as an innovative project, is one of the most important non-fiction film festivals in Europe, included by the European Film Academy on the list of festivals that have the right to make direct nominations for the European Film Awards.

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