Over 50 films, most of them national firsts in Romania, will be screened at the tenth edition of the ESTE FILM Festival, which this year will take place in seven venues in Sibiu, organisers announced on Tuesday.

The anniversary edition opens on Wednesday, June 3, at 20:00hrs, with the screening of the film 'Wind, Talk to Me,' directed by Stefan Dordevic. Throughout Sunday, the festival will present over 50 films, most of them national firsts in Romania, including 29 short films brought together in two competition sections and a retrospective.

Rounding up the playbill is a series of related events that complete the festival experience. This year's festival map includes 7 venues in Sibiu: CINEGOLD, Gong Theatre, Faculty of Letters and Arts of ULBS, Carturesti, Consomme Bistro, and the ASTRA County Library and Museum of Contemporary Art.

On Wednesday, on the first day of the festival, the public can watch, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the video art exhibition 'Antiphon,' while at the ASTRA County Library there will be the Film Creation Workshop - CinExplorez.

Starting at 19:00hrs, at the CineGold cinema, the members of RACOLAJ will work simultaneously on the same work, using exclusively materials from the festival universe: posters, flyers, photographs, prints, visual fragments and traces collected from the 10 years of ESTE FILM.

At the same cinema hall, from 20:00hrs the main event of the first day will take place, the screening of the film 'Wind, Talk to Me,' directed by Stefan Dordevic.

The schedule of the anniversary edition includes on Thursday, June 4, at 18:00hrs, a dialogue between literature and cinema: 'From the novel to the screen: Irina-Margareta Nistor, in dialogue with Marin Malaicu-Hondrari.'

On Friday, June 5, the public is invited to the 'Movie Bedroom,' at CineGold, a unique experience this year: the spectators will watch, for the first time, several short documentaries about the sports and cultural life in Sibiu and its surroundings, made in the 1930s by the Sibiu doctor Gustav Wagner, with the soundtrack made especially for this event by the duo Karpov not Kasparov.

In the second part of the evening, 'Vampiru' Zombi' (Zombie, the Vampire) will be screened, directed by Sebastian Mihailescu - the story of a film student who, working with a musician who strikingly resembles a figure from her childhood memories, ends up questioning the border between reality, fiction and her own memory.

Weekend mornings will be dedicated to children and families, with animations included in the CinExplorez section.

Also for the young audience, on Sunday, June 7, at 17:00hrs, the Gala of the Film Editing Workshop will take place, during which productions made by middle school and high school students participating in the workshops dedicated to learning the basics about the production and post-production of a short film will be awarded.

The director of the festival, Ioana Ciuban, says that she wants 'the public to leave, after the five days of the festival, with the feeling that they have lived differently, that they have discovered something new - a film, an idea, an emotion, maybe even a person.'

'Ten editions for a European art films and films d'auteur festival in Sibiu and in Romania means not only passion, but also an enormous amount of work and a little magic, to which the increasingly extensive team and all the partners and sponsors, who have become friends with us all these years, contribute. When we started, in 2016, we only imagined that in 10 years we would be at this point, with dozens of films on the program, national premieres, two competition sections, two juries, filmmakers and professionals present in Sibiu and a series of cultural experiences to complete the program. That dream came true. I would like the audience to leave, after the five days of the festival, with the feeling that they have lived differently, that they have discovered something new - a film, an idea, an emotion, maybe even a person - and that they have felt that little magic that makes you want to come back. Especially since we offer them multiple contexts in which to watch films: at the beginning of the summer, at ESTE FILM Festival, and during the year, at ESTE Filmul de Miercuri' (Wednesday's Film), said Ioana Ciuban. AGERPRES (RO - editing by: Isabela Paulescu; EN - writing by: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu)