Astra Film Junior, around the Earth in 23 films

Children and teenagers have their festival again: Astra Film Junior, the first and most complex education program through cinema in Romania, returns to Sibiu between October 9-16. Designed for three age categories (6+, 11+ and 15+), the AF Junior educational program includes film screenings in cinema halls and full-dome cinema 360 (Astra Film New Media Full Dome), followed by didactic activities in class, comic contest and a film workshop. Each year, approximately 27,000 students participate in AF Junior. Details about the Astra Film Festival program, on the website https://www.astrafilm.ro/program-2022 .

Astra Film Junior presents a selection of the best on the market today in narrative documentary films for children and teenagers. " Everything will be great, because you will expand your horizons. And, through the Astra Film New Media Full Dome program, you will see immersive projections, come into contact with new technologies and get acquainted with an unusual type of cinema , in 360 ̊ format, in which the film surrounds the viewer ", he conveys to young viewers Dumitru Budrala, director-founder of Astra Film Festival.

The organizers have prepared for the viewers in the 6+ category life stories of children close to their own age, children who came out of anonymity by thinking outside the box, constant desire for knowledge and insight. Yang, an 11-year-old boy from China, makes many sacrifices to learn all that traditional Chinese theater means ( The Monkey King , 2019) . Aatos, Amine and Flo, three inseparable friends from a neighborhood in Brussels , are looking for answers to big people's questions ( Aatos and the world , 2019). Azat and his colleagues, from Tartastan, are 12 years old and, as young journalists, take care of an important mission every week ( Azat and Youtubers from Tartastan , 2018). For their part, Clara, Matei and their friends embark on a journey full of adventures and adventures in the Danube Delta ( Străjerii Deltei , 2022). And the film #On the net answers some questions like What is and how does the net work? , Who are the trolls? , What about the influencers?.

Viewers in the 11+ category will learn what children from different corners of the world dream about: Asho, from Iran, wants to become a famous actor ( Asho , 2019); Ayana, a girl from Kyrgyzstan, would like to be first in an exclusively male sport ( Ayana , 2019); Reshad, from Azerbaijan, wants to become a pigeon breeder ( The Boy with the Birds , 2019), and Julieta, a young woman from the Netherlands, initiates an action to green the ocean, which she considers her second home ( Julieta and turtles, in a plastic soup , 2020).

High school students will discover, in the program dedicated to the 15+ category, the life of one of the most followed 14-year-old girls on Instagram ( Gașca de fete , 2022), the artistic maturation of a Norwegian singer who drops out of school to become a pop star ( Aurora , 2019 ) or the way in which the image of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu is perceived by today's teenagers ( Pentru mine tu esti Ceaușescu , 2021) . Through the documentary films selected for them, young people learn how to react to sexual predators in the online environment ( In the net of sexual predators , 2020) and what are the effects of the rapid spread of artificial intelligence - saving humanity or, on the contrary, its total control ( iHuman , 2019).

Young and very young viewers are also invited to the immersive full-dome cinema 360 screenings in the Dome installed in Piața Mare ( Astra Film New Media Full Dome special program). Through spectacular filming, they will learn that there are other sources of light besides the Sun ( In a journey with light , 2019), mysteries of the Universe will be revealed to them with the help of the largest radio telescope ( Dreaming of the stars , 2021) , and will follow the story of interstellar messages carried to extraterrestrial civilizations by space probes launched 45 years ago ( Voyager, a never-ending journey , 2019). At the same time, young viewers will recreate Captain Cook's journey through the Pacific Ocean ( The Navigators , 2021), they will see how an electronic music composer finds inspiration in the sound of the Arctic Ocean ( -22.7C , 2021) and they will follow with their hearts the adventures of Shorty, Indigo and Jake in Legend of the Enchanted Reef (2021), a film for the whole family, full of humor and imagination.

" We have a generation that consumes a lot of audiovisual content from an early age, but is given too few opportunities to reflect on it. The role of the Astra Film Junior program is precisely this: to provide them with the necessary tools for the formation of critical thinking and for exercising the agility to understand the audiovisual content to which they are exposed " , said Dumitru Budrala.

Astra Film Junior also contains a Film Workshop for high school students, which aims to practice both the ability of teenagers to understand a documentary film and the process by which it is made, as well as the ability to speak in public. The long-awaited meeting with comics will not be missed - a creative educational tool through which children and adolescents are called to analyze and interpret the films they watch and tell their own story through comics - an exercise to strengthen the skill of creating a work on a given theme ̆.

In turn, the teachers and educational counselors who will accompany the children to the screenings benefit from the " Profession of Educator " training , in which they learn how documentary cinema can be used in the educational process. For them there will be a special screening ̆: the disturbing documentary film " Why didn't you stay for me?" ” (directed by Milou Gevers , 2020), which will be accompanied by a presentation and followed by a free discussion about the help we can offer to children who are going through difficult times after the loss of a parent .

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 European Film Academy on the list of festivals that have the right to make direct nominations for the European Film Awards.