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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
    • ENFF 2023 On Demand!
      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!
    • What’s up in Slovak Cinema? A conversation with Monika Lostakova
      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.
    • Work in Progress
      In Work in Progress, emerging filmmakers and artists will present their works in development to the audience and engage in discussions with Dutch experts.
    • Festival Timetable Available!
    • Check out the catalogue for our 2023 edition!
    • Music at ENFF
      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!

On Tour in Amsterdam: Film on Nina Cassian, Famous Romanian Poet & Enfant Terrible

Saturday 2 November | 15:00 hours | Rialto | Ceintuurbaan 338, 1072 GN Amsterdam

In collaboration with Eastwards, ENFF On Tour brings the Dutch premiere of THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME AND ME by Mona Nicoara and Dana Bunescu in Rialto Amsterdam. A documentary about Nina Cassian, Romanian enfant terrible. She was an amazing poet, translator, journalist, pianist, composer and film critic. A fascinating artist whose life was a unique fight between ethics and aesthetics, and who saves herself in fairy tales through times of fascism, communism and an unwanted exile into capitalism. The screening will be followed by Q&A with the director Dana Bunescu and musical performance by Balkan Vrouwenkoor Amsterdam! Come and join us.

Synopsis

We all wrestle with our past. Some more than others. Romanian Jewish avant-garde poet, musician, visual artist, femme fatale, prodigious drinker and terminal smoker Nina Cassian had more than most to wrestle with. Her refuge in the Communist underground during the Fascist 1940s put her first in complicit proximity to the Stalinist regime of the 1950s. Then propelled her on a collision course with the Ceausescu regime in the 1970s and eventually sent her into an unwanted New York exile in 1985, when her poems led to a secret police murder. An intensely personal film about art, belief and politics based on a rich archive of films, music, poems, official television appearances, never-before-seen private recordings and secret police surveillance materials.

Director’s statement

Together with producers Ada and Alexandru Solomon, who have an even longer personal story with Nina, we embarked on this project of excavating the many layers of mythology and ideology that surround this unique, defiant figure in a country where before 1989 dissent was rare, where “Communist” became an unexamined dirty word in the first minutes of the Revolution, where Jewishness remains to this day a taboo subject, and “feminism” is a joke. We believe that Nina’s story teaches necessary lessons in a time when creative freedom is once again threatened by the rise of authoritarianism and extremism, surveillance returns as a tool for global repression and censorship, and the forces of nationalism bear down on more global, internationalist projects. (Mona Nicoară)

Original title: Distanţa dintre mine şi mine Country: Romania, USA Year: 2018 Length: 89 min Director: Mona Nicoara, Dana Bunescu Idea: Ada Salomon Editing: Dana Bunescu Cinematography: Ovidiu Marginean, Rudolf Costin Production: Ada Solomon & Alexandru Solomon – Hi Film Productions, Mona Nicoara – Sat Mic Film, Diana Paroiu – Romanian Public Television