Inaugurated during the previous edition, when You Are Ceausescu to me won the section prize, the What's Up, Doc? Competition continues in the same playful vein, with a focus not only on classic documentaries but also on films that tread the fine line between fact and fiction. "Regardless of the path they take, which can sometimes be mystifying, breaking the rules of the genre, the ten films in What's Up, Doc? get to the truth of the matter each in its own way, whether it's about antiheroes with larger-than-life ambitions, personal quests that never really end, or real portraits of niche communities constructed with the weapons of experimental film or fiction." (Mihai Chirilov)
The Muslim protagonist of Crows Are White (d. Ahsen Nadeem) goes on a spiritual journey to a Buddhist monastery to get out of a personal impasse, while the main female character of The Land You Belong (d. Elena Rebeca Carini) returns to Romania for the first time after being adopted by an Italian couple in the 1990s, in search of her biological family and her own identity. Another Romanian coproduction, the provocative hybrid Anhell69 (d. Theo Montoya) combines the negative memories and elegiac nostalgia of a young Colombian filmmaker raised in the conservative and violent labyrinth of Medellin.
Awarded at Transilvania Shorts in 2017, Slovak Denis Dobrovoda returns to Romania with a genuine documentary, The Cathedral (Grand Prix in Krakow), the story of a grandiose genius who, for 60 years, built a giant cathedral out of recycled material and rubbish, by himself, with no knowledge of architecture. At the other end of the spectrum, non-conformist artist Giovanni Bucchieri, a former dancer with the Royal Swedish Ballet, packs a seductive autobiographical archival documentary about a failed love affair into a subversive fiction about love found in 100 Seasons.
Fresh perspectives on masculinity and femininity can be found in Dogwatch (d. Gregoris Rentis) and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (d. Anna Hints). The former is a three-part open-air portrait of mercenaries hired to protect ships from modern pirates, while the latter brings out, in the chiaroscuro of a sauna, the deepest traumas and secrets of a group of women in an introspective and liberating therapy.
Three other films about niche communities round out the What's Up, Doc? competition - Like an Island (dir. Tizian Büchi, Grand Prix at Visions du Réel), Knit's Island (dir. Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse and Quentin L'Helgouac'h) and The Outliers (dir. Raphaël Mathié) - and in all three, elements of fiction play a special role: from the magical realism that pace life in a quiet Lausanne neighbourhood, to the muckraking vision of two immigrant guards, to the avatars of film directors who spend thousands of hours in the virtual space of a survival-type video game to win the trust of its users, and, last but not least, to the stylised mise en scène of a forgotten Hamlet in the French Alps, where the few inhabitants seem unaffected by the pace and hardships of the modern world.