Award-winning, London-based international magazine The Calvert Journal is ready to kick off the inaugural edition of its new online film festival. The publication is dedicated to exploring the culture and creativity of the New East and delivers a daily briefing on art, design, film, architecture, fashion and travel to a global audience through a mix of reportage, interviews, photography and videos.

The Calvert Journal Film Festival will offer a unique seven-day digital showcase of diverse cinematic talent from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The event will feature seven films, screened online for free at calvertjournal.com from 12-18 October; each day, a different title will be made available for 24 hours.

The programme will feature both fiction and documentary films, with subjects ranging from environmental disasters and single motherhood to millennial struggles and generational disconnect, with the aim being to celebrate the region’s diverse perspectives, from Slovenia to Kazakhstan. The festival opens on 12 October with George Itzhak’s Waiting for the Sea (USA/Uzbekistan), a documentary short about an electronic music festival in Uzbekistan’s disappearing Aral Sea. On the same day, an interview with the director will be streamed on The Calvert Journal’s official Instagram channel at 19:00 GMT.

Day two (13 October) will host Damjan Kozole’s Half-Sister [+leggi anche:
recensione
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intervista: Damjan Kozole
scheda film] (Slovenia/North Macedonia/Serbia/Croatia), a drama revolving around two estranged semi-siblings, Irena and Neza, who start sharing a flat in Ljubljana by force of circumstances, followed by the online premiere of Sharipa Urazbayeva’s Mariam (Kazakhstan/Germany), the visually jarring and painfully realistic story of a mother of four small children and her struggles to survive in a remote village on the steppe after her husband disappears and is presumed dead.

On Day four (15 October), the festival will host Natasza Parzymies’ eccentric short Hotshot (Poland), which sees a rising Polish pop singer find herself in a women’s jail, where she is tasked with running the prison choir. Two more online premieres will take place on days five and six – namely, Ivan Salatić’s You Have the Night [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ivan Salatić
scheda film] (Montenegro/Serbia/Qatar), a harrowing family drama set in a Montenegrin shipyard, and Nino Zhvania’s Parade [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (Georgia), a heartwarming Georgian road trip whose unlikely protagonists are a criminal who has just got out of prison, an inept painter and a failed actor.

The showcase will be brought to a close by Hristiana Raykova’s The Pit (Germany/Bulgaria), a portrait of her home town’s elders who, sitting in the hot water, lean back against the pool’s edge and philosophise about their lives.

All of the titles will be freely available for viewing worldwide, with the exception of Hotshot (not available in the Americas, Asia, Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Netherlands or Belgium).

You can find the full programme of the event here.