How the World is changing

Astra Film Festival is a place where film continues beyond the closing credits, through conversations involving filmmakers, invited experts and the audience. This year's edition, taking place in Sibiu from 17 to 25 October, features four DocTalks - moments when cinema turns into conversation. Starting from films in the programme, the discussions address some of the most important questions of our time: how a world built over generations is changing, how we relate to technologies that are transforming our lives, what we do with traditions that are part of who we are and with the painful legacies of the past, and what happens when state institutions fail to protect the most vulnerable.

The full DocTalks programme is available here: https://astrafilm.ro/festival/program/doctalks
Tickets and passes: https://astrafilm.ro/festival/tickets.

17 October. Artificial Intelligence

We are living in a reality in which Artificial Intelligence is increasingly present, creating growing dependency while also providing more and more reasons for concern. Increasingly, influential voices are warning of the imminent danger of a near future in which Artificial Intelligence could take control and challenge the very existence of humanity. Is there a real possibility that generative AI could take over decision-making at the level of society, or is this merely a science-fiction-apocalyptic marketing scheme? What possibilities and mechanisms exist for regulating AI and maintaining human control over knowledge and decisions concerning society?

The DocTalk will take place before the screening of “Elon Musk Revealed”, a documentary about the sometimes fatal failures of Tesla's AI-driven Autopilot vehicles and the way these incidents are used to train AI systems. The discussion will also refer to the other three films in the selection, which show how AI is entering our lives and everyday intimacy (“Replica”, “All We Tell Each Other”, “How to Talk to Lydia”). Details: https://astrafilm.ro/en/festival/program/doctalks/doctalk-57286.

18 October. Transgenerational Trauma

The DocTalk on transgenerational trauma is a conversation examining the development of the characters featured in three films from the official selection (“So Familiar”, “Grandmother's Last Letters”, “If Pigeons Pretended to Be Gold”).

In “So Familiar”, director Rachel Taparjan documents her own journey towards self-understanding through the discovery of her biological family in Romania, having been adopted at an early age by a British family. “If Pigeons Pretended to Be Gold” follows an arduous journey, from desperate searching to the director's regaining her balance and pursuing her goal of helping her brother, who has fallen into alcoholism. “Grandmother's Last Letters” examines relationships between members of a former Soviet family with branches across several states of the USSR.

Together, these perspectives promise an essential conversation about the ways documentary cinema and psychotherapy can offer valid paths towards understanding inherited trauma and developing our capacity to manage it. Details: https://astrafilm.ro/en/festival/program/doctalks/doctalk-57289.

22 October. The Living Mountain

Pătru and Petrică are among the last mountain shepherds in Europe. Like their ancestors, they take their flocks through the vast Carpathians, among bears and wolves, in sunshine, rain, snow and wind. While they are away, Maria runs the household — the other end of the same life. Dumitru Budrala's “The Milky Way” (Romania, 2026) brings us close to this world, one to which we are far more connected than we may realise. Presented three years ago as a work in progress, the film returns to Astra Film Festival in its final version — shorter, more precise and more moving.

The Living Mountain DocTalk takes place during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. It starts from the world of transhumant shepherds in Transylvania, captured by Dumitru Budrala in “On the Road” and “The Milky Way”, and moves through a 1925 documentary about the seasonal migration of the Bakhtiari of Iran, involving more than 50,000 people and approximately 500,000 animals (“Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life”). It follows one of the last great livestock migrations in Montana (“Sweetgrass”), shows the struggle of a shepherd woman in Montenegro to protect her community's pastures (“To Hold a Mountain”), and examines how difficult and unprofitable wool production has become today (“Wool Man Sheep”). 

Together, these films explore the relationship between people, animals and territory and raise the essential question: what must remain possible for life on the mountain to continue? Details: https://astrafilm.ro/en/festival/program/doctalks/doctalk-57976.

23 October. School Dropout

What happens when school dropout is passed from one generation to the next? The documentary “Children of the Network” offers an extreme starting point for this question. Children from families in which the parents themselves dropped out of school grow up outside institutions, within an underground economy, so that the only state institution they genuinely come into contact with is prison. Some are exploited by their own families and drawn into organised networks of thieves operating in Paris.

The DocTalk on school dropout aims to outline a possible path for preventing the worsening of problems in Romania's education system and seeks to answer questions such as: What will Romania's public sphere look like with an unreformed education system, if school dropout expands to a quarter of the population? Under these conditions, what will Romanian society look like in 10, 20 or 30 years? What could the stages of education reform look like over the next ten years, so that we can reach a state of normality? What can be done to prevent state failure, and what will be the cost of failing to intervene now? Details: https://astrafilm.ro/en/festival/program/doctalks/doctalk-57292

About Astra Film Festival

Founded in 1993, Astra Film Festival is the longest-running documentary film festival in Romania and one of Europe's leading events dedicated to non-fiction cinema. The festival is included by the European Film Academy among the festivals entitled to make direct nominations for the European Film Awards. Astra Film Festival is a strategic cultural project of the Ministry of Culture, organised by Astra Film, CNM Astra and Fundația Astra Film. The festival is under the High Patronage of the President of Romania, co-funded by Sibiu City Hall and supported by the Sibiu County Council.

Institutional partners: CNC, UNATC, UCIN, Sibiu State Philharmonic, DRRM, Dacin Sara
Main sponsor: ING
Mobility partner: Peugeot
Industry partner: VOYO
Sponsors: Unimat, Simpa, Zizin, Cotnari, Ursus
Main media partner: DIGI 24
Recommended by: Europa FM
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