The Astra Film on Tour is a unique opportunity for Cluj-Napoca’s cinephile audience to see top nonfiction films in their city, documentaries with an impressive festival career, highly regarded at an international level.

On Friday, January the 26th 2018, Astra Film on Tour debuts at 18:00 with Convictions/Comisia de recrutare (directed by Tatiana Chistova), a film that offers a rare insight of the bureaucratic machinery, through which all youth is forced to pass so that they can consider themselves fit for military service in the increasingly militarized society of today’s Russia. When recruits happen to be “different” (pacifists or homosexuals, for example), confrontation with the commission becomes dramatic. Starting with 20:00, the cinephile audience of Cluj will watch PhoeniXXX (directed by Mihai Gavril Dragolea), awarded with the Best Research Award of the Romanian section of AFF 2017, a film that takes a look at the offline life of two videochat models and gives the spectator unprecedented access to a ruthless and very popular industry in Romania.

On the second day (Saturday, January 27th 2018), at 18:00, three documentary shorts will firmly hold the audience in their sits. Homecoming/ Întoarcerea acasă, the debut film of Noam Sobovitz, awarded Best Short Film at AFF 2017, is a film about the metamorphosis of his brother, a boy raised in the Jewish religion of West Bank setlement, into a EU citizen, speech writer for the Vice-President of the European Commission. The Contestant/Concurenta, directed by Alberto Diana, showcases Francesca, a 40-something year old gym trainer, divorced and mother of three children, who due to financial problems, decides to take part in a general knowledge TV contest. Close Ties/ Legături de familie (Zofia Kowalewska) tells the bittersweet story of an elderly couple after 45 years of marriage, a case-study that centers the couple who withstood the test of time despite many obstacles. At 20:00, the Astra Film Caravan presents the best film of the Central and Eastern Europe section AFF 2017, Communion/Prima Împărtășanie, by Anna Zamecka, an exciting film about a young girls’s efforts to keep her dysfunctional family together. Mature beyond her age, Ola, who is 14 years old, cooks, cleans and cares for her autistic brother, while her father is useless and her mother is mostly absent. It is also up to her to help her brother be accepted for the first communion, an opportunity to reunite the whole family.

On the last day of Astra Film on Tour – Sunday, January 28, 2018, at 20:00, Taste of cement/Gust de ciment is scheduled, directed by Ziad Kalthoum, which will close the weekend dedicated to non-fiction films. Adopting a stylized aesthetic, the film follows a group of Syrian construction workers in Beirut, overwhelmed by the daily routine exhaustion, which becomes mental fatigue under the psychological weight of war. They work to build a city that is inaccessible to them, while their own cities are destroyed.

The screenings take place at Cinema Victoria – Bulevardul Eroilor, nr. 51. Access to the venue is ticket based. The price of one ticket for a single viewing is 13 RON (full price) and 10 RON (discount price). Astra Film On Tour in Cluj is held by Astra Film, CNM Astra, Sibiu County Council and Victoria Cinema Cluj-Napoca.