Romanian film review – Astra & Culmea festivals, The Spruce Forest

Autumn is a great season for festivals, so let’s have a look at those happening: one of the greats and a fresh one. With a feature bonus, a theatrical release that fits in this cinematic take on social, historical, and political themes – past, present, and future.

Sibiu’s Astra Film Festival has been consistently great over decades, with its strong anthropological focus. It features both established documentaries and smaller, world cinema productions on the most individual, particular of topics. Programmes are grouped by the most urgent of topics (fake news, the online space, neo-fascism, identity) and I was happy to find some of my year’s favourites. In Farah Kassem’s We Are Inside, the director returns to her home town of Tripoli in northern Lebanon to take care of her father, a poet. Farah decides to write poetry herself in an attempt to find a closer common language. Mustapha Kassem is a fantastic protagonist, charming, playful, utterly stubborn. A beautiful, wise film, weaving the personal with the city in constant political turmoil, and uplifting in its view of art as healing and building community.