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    • NTC Award Ceremony
      New Talent Competition gives young filmmakers from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe the opportunity to present their outstanding debut or second film to the public. Join us on Sunday 1 December at 19h
    • Music at ENFF
      The Eastern Neighbours Film Festival welcomes special musical guests each year to enrich our program. For this 16th edition, we’re thrilled to present two talented young musicians: guitarist Antonio Peršak (CR) and violinist İdil Yunkuş (TR). Together, they will perform a traditional Balkan dance and folk song, highlighting the beauty of this music through the… Read more: Music at ENFF
    • Masterclass with Janez Burger
      This masterclass presents a unique opportunity to explore Burger's distinct storytelling style, genre use, and exploration of contemporary social issues. Join us on Saturday 30 November at 17h - Room 5
    • Panel Discussion: Exploration of individual and collective memory in cinema
      Panel Discussion: Exploration of individual and collective memory in cinema on Friday 29 November at 18h

The Chalice. Of Sons and Daughters

Traditional Roma-communities of Romania are culturally rich communities, ruled with complicated rituals and customs. Marriage is maybe the most set in stone such custom, with everything about it being under very strict community control. What keeps everyone alert is Roma marriage’s highest stake: fertility and conceiving boys. 

Synopsis

The Chalice dives us into the lives of Peli and Nina, a couple married by arrangement and parents to a little girl. Their existence is under intense scrutiny as local custom imposes that the couple conceive a boy for their marriage to survive. Only a boy can later inherit the family’s chalice (tahtai), a badge of great symbolic and financial value. This puts young Nina under considerable pressure, but nobody around her sympathises with her plight.

Filmmakers Catalina Tesar and Dana Bunescu embarked on the project after Tesar spent years studying the Roma community for her PhD research. Having won their trust in the process, Tesar is allowed to bring in cameras to record their everyday lives. Generously repaying its viewers for choosing to watch it, this documentary is an empathic observation of how little freedom these people have in choosing how to live their lives.

O TAHTAI. SAVENDAR TAI SEIANDAR

Romania | 2022 | 83 min

DIRECTOR: Catalina Tesar, Dana Bunescu

PRODUCTION: Catalina Tesar – Erakli Film; Dana Bunescu – Fundația Arte Vizuale

SCREENPLAY: Catalina Tesar

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Catalina Tesar, Catalin Musat, Ileana Szasz

EDITING: Ciprian Cimpoi, Dana Bunescu

SCREENING: Saturday 26 November / 15:00h & Sunday 27 November / 10:45h / Zaal 4

The screening will be followed by Q&A with director Catalina Tesar. Dutch Premiere

Festivals & Awards (selection)

Sarajevo Film Festival, 2022 – Documentary Competition | Astra Film Festival, 2022 – Best Romanian Documentary

Directors’ bios

Catalina Tesar is lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology University of Bucharest and researcher at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest. She has a PhD in anthropology from the University College London, with a thesis about the economic, sexual and political dimensions of arranged marriages among Transylvanian Roma. This documentary is based on her PhD research. Catalina received a Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Wenner-Gren Foundation to help filming on The Chalice. 

Dana Bunescu is an extraordinary editor and sound designer whose work has been undoubtedly instrumental for the New Romanian Cinema of the past 20 years. She is the receiver of a Silver Bear Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution in Film Editing at the 67th edition of the Berlinale International Film. She is also the co-director of the documentaries The Distance Between Me and Me with Mona Nicoara and Evropa with Razvan Radulescu.