Maryam Tafakory and Eyal Sivan are two contemporary authors with distinct and powerful voices, coming from territories currently experiencing violent political and social turmoil. The two retrospectives at this year's One World Romania Festival are dedicated to them.

Focus Maryam Tafakory, 06th-07th of April 

The Focus Maryam Tafakory compiles a curated selection of films, presented alongside live performances by Maryam Tafakory herself. Her decade-long multidisciplinary practice has produced important works that weave together poetry and performance, archival and documentary footage with essay and collage filmmaking. 

Her works are artistic mosaics threaded by intimate, critical analysis of gender roles, social taboos and the dominant structures that govern representation within post-revolution Iranian society and cinema. Taken individually, Tafakory’s films are a potent manifestation of the praxis of poetry and politics, while their sensorial and emotional intimacy becomes heightened when experienced within a cinematic space.
 

Focus Eyal Sivan, 08th-13th of April

Eyal Sivan is a documentary filmmaker and theoretician, born in Haifa (Israel) and renowned for his uncompromising political stances and for using  cinema as a tool to question and review dominant narratives of the past and present. With 30 years of activity, Sivan defines his filmography as an “encounter with reality”. He has been celebrated at prestigious festivals and art shows worldwide, and has had numerous retrospectives dedicated to his work. 

His extensive body of work (in film and in writing) delves into themes of memory, historical representation, national identity, (dis)obedience, and responsibility. He has tackled subjects such as the political violence and genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, as well as the state control and repression carried out by the Stasi in the former GDR. Nevertheless, the majority of his films and his frequent lectures are concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the relationship with the historical past, memory as resistance or as a political tool, documentary filmmaking, and ethics. He hasn’t been spared from controversies, critiques and censorship for his unwavering takes on the society he comes from and its power dynamics.