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    • New Talents Open Call
      Eastern Neighbours Film Festival (ENFF) began in The Netherlands in 2008 with the idea to offer Dutch and international audiences a unique glimpse into the cinema of their neighbors from Eastern and Southern Europe. This annual event presents the most recent, exciting, and thought‐provoking films, from countries with small, but often powerful film industries, that… Read more: New Talents Open Call
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      Unable To attend the festival in person? No problem! From November 27th to December 3rd, we’re thrilled to bring you a curated selection of this year’s films available for online viewing! Catch our captivating Opening Film Ivan’s Land, or the touching Closing Film Seventh Heaven. Or explore a collection of shorts from the New Talents Competition! Follow along… Read more: ENFF 2023 On Demand!
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      We talked with Monika Lošťáková about contemporary Slovak cinema.
    • ENFF and the Eastern European Film Festival Network!
      The Eastern European Film Festival Network brings together five film festivals dedicated to promoting and showcasing Eastern European cinema, alongside one partner organisation.
    • Masterclasses
      Through these masterclasses we approach two memory in film from different angles: memories from a personal or collective recollection through archive material.
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      In Work in Progress, emerging filmmakers and artists will present their works in development to the audience and engage in discussions with Dutch experts.
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      Every year, ENFF brings special musical guests who bring beauty to the program and further represent the rich cultures of their countries to a Dutch audience.
    • Film Marathon
      Join us for the Film Marathon, a new concept in which we merge two components, Short Films, Big Stories, and New Talents Competition into a whole-day screening of short films!

Love Is Not an Orange

dir. OTILIA BABARA

DUTCH PREMIERE

An impressive, award-winning film that dives into the privacy of thousands of Moldovan families in the period when the Soviet Union fell apart. Through archive footage, the director shows the impact of the separation of mothers and their children, as women moved abroad to work and provide for their families. 

When Moldova gained independence in the early ’90s, women left the country in large numbers to work abroad and provide for their families. They sent home boxes filled with gifts and food; in return, their children would send videotapes. The videos allowed the mothers to watch the lives of their children and see how they were growing up without a parent. The film uses private archives to give an intimate glimpse into a generation of mothers and children torn apart in order to survive as their country transitions from communism to capitalism.

SHOWTIMES

Thursday, 23 November – 20:30 | Special Guest: director Otilia Babara


Friday, 24 November – 14:30 | Special Feature: Masterclass + Q&A with director Otilia Babara

Buy Tickets Here!

LOVE IS NOT AN ORANGE | 2022 | 73 min | Moldova, France, Netherlands, Belgium

PRODUCTIONHanne Phlypo – Clin d’oeil; Basalt Film, Alegria Productions, Altfilm
CASTAdriana Bitca, Alina Echimenco, Ecaterina Suricov, Olesea Svecla
SCREENPLAYOtilia Babara
EDITINGPierpaolo Filomeno
SOUNDMark Glynne
LANGUAGERomanian
SUBTITLESEnglish

FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION) 

Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, 2022 – Silver Eye Award for Best Film | DOK Leipzig, 2022 – World Premiere | Trieste Film Festival, 2023 – CEI Award | Visions du Reel, 2023 | Doc Fortnight: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, 2023

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

As a child growing up in post-soviet Moldova, I was bewildered by the fact that a lot of my friends were growing up without their mothers, who had left to work abroad. I was also fascinated by the boxes full of gifts these women would send to their kids on a regular basis. Oranges, chocolates, jeans, plastic dolls – countless goods that we had never seen or tasted before. This was a great source of excitement, and it brought hope that we would be able to live well one day. During my research, I discovered that while these boxes were arriving from abroad, the children and their fathers would record videotapes to send to the mothers. I started gathering a lot of these tapes from different families and I was immediately struck by the way people used this medium to communicate. These archives – in their ability to bring the collective experience of migration into the film – grew to become the story itself. What started as a fascination for the way people communicate turned into an interest in the visible contrasts between what is happening in our lives and what we decide to share with others… Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moldova opened itself to the world in great part because of these mothers. They showed us another reality, another way of living, one box at a time.

DIRECTOR’S BIO 

Otilia Babara is a documentary filmmaker from Moldova currently based in Brussels. She holds a degree in documentary filmmaking from the Docnomads European Master program (Belgium, Hungary, Portugal) and is a 2013 Berlinale Talents fellow. She directed and produced the short films Irene (2015), selected for several international film festivals, and Women on Canvas (2009), awarded in Astra Film Festival and Cronograf Film Festival. She is drawn to those who usually go unnoticed. Her films expose big wounds hidden in small details and she’s fascinated by untold stories of women.