"Dad" under the moon

Sergey Kuznetsov

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This year in Sochi, viewers could watch new Russian films right on the main festival square

Vladimir Mashkov in the film "Russian Revolt", but the Sochi festival prize for best actor was given to Sergei Makovetsky. Mashkov played Pugachev in “Russian Revolt”, Makovetsky played Shvabrin. The jury liked Shvabrin more. (Photo: NTV-Profit )

Last year's Kinotavr shocked everyone. It turned out that it was very easy to destroy what had been accumulated over the years. The International Institute of Corporations, attracted by Mark Rudinshtein to finance the festival, seemed to do everything in its power to ensure that the very spirit of cinema disappeared from Sochi: the city was teeming with pop stars, pop concerts were held on the main festival square, and the films themselves were on the margins of festival life .

Capture of Zimny
This time everything was different. Rudinshtein parted ways with the corporations and their institute, saying that they were good guys, they just didn’t like cinema, and again took everything into his own hands. The result was two major changes. Firstly, just like at the Locarno festival, Russian films began to be shown in the open air, on the square in front of the Winter Theater. Secondly, the festival schedule was changed.

As you know, in June the Kinotavr company holds two festivals in Sochi - the Open Russian (this year the eleventh) and the Sochi International Film Festival (the seventh). In previous years, festivals were held simultaneously, which is why audiences sometimes did not have time to watch all the interesting films. In addition, Rudinshtein was apparently depressed that the international festival was being overshadowed by the Russian one (everyone was only interested in who would win “our” competition). This year, the festivals were separated by time: the Russian one took place from June 1 to 14, and the international one from June 7 to 17. The festival became longer, costs increased, but the organizers seemed to be satisfied and even promised to move the festivals even further apart. In our opinion, it’s still not worth being zealous about this. After all, some guests of the international festival come to Sochi to watch new Russian cinema.

The converted area in front of the Winter Theater, where a huge screen and two and a half thousand seats were installed, became the new pride of Kinotavr. Every evening after ten, those who wished could watch Russian films for free - and not only full-length feature films, but also short films. The most popular films attracted up to five thousand spectators. Of course, there were plenty of social and pop events at Kinotavr: a traditional circus show, a ballet evening, and even the not-so-elegant KinoDiva competition. However, we can confidently say that Kinotavr has returned to the formula “The main thing is cinema.” And he was rewarded: never before have so many “savage” film fans, mainly from Moscow, come to Sochi. In order to save money, they did not buy tickets through the Kinotavr company, but arrived on their own and checked into the Primorskaya hotel next to the official Pearl.

In memory of Tarantino
The main problem of the Open Russian Festival has always remained that all more or less famous directors agreed to bring their films to Sochi only under the guarantee of the first prize (which, of course, no one could give them). Last year’s scandal is memorable when Alexander Sokurov refused the Grand Prix, since it was “only” the second most important prize. This year, Pavel Lungin with his “Wedding,” which recently competed for Cannes prizes, simply did not come. According to the official version, due to the fact that they did not have time to print the Russian copy. But, of course, everyone said that he was simply afraid of not winning.

Eighteen films participated in the competition program. For the first time in recent years there was no separate debut tournament - it was not possible to collect a sufficient number of films. It was replaced by the Debut-Kinotavr competition for short films by young filmmakers. The consequences of the 1998 crisis continue to be felt. Taking a closer look at the Sochi films, you notice that many of them should have been released more than a year ago, but were frozen due to lack of funds. New Russians who don’t count money are still roaming the screen, and there are still countless action films about killers “in memory of Tarantino.” Probably, a couple of years ago, both Yegor Konchalovsky’s detective thriller “The Recluse” (see www.itogi.ru, “Films” section) and Alexander Atanesyan’s debut film “24 Hours” - a stylish, moderately ironic story of a killer - would have been received much better performed by Maxim Sukhanov, who escapes from several crime clans at once. The audience greeted "Brother 2" much warmer with its straightforward division into good and bad.

Intrigues
Before the start of the festival, "Brother-2" was considered one of the favorites. The second was “Moon Papa” by Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov, which ultimately won the main prize. As the screenings progressed, a large-scale adaptation of “The Captain’s Daughter” called “Russian Revolt” (Itogi already wrote about all the above-mentioned films) and the absolutely fresh “The Diary of His Wife” by Alexei Uchitel were added to the list of possible contenders. It was this film that caused the most lively debate among film critics. Opponents found the story of the last years of Ivan Bunin's life pretentious and unreliable, supporters drew attention to the sophistication of the film, the performance of the leading actor Andrei Smirnov and the merits of the script. However, both of them agreed that “The Diary of His Wife” is one of the few Russian films of real festival level.

Unlike last year, there were no clear leaders such as “Moloch” and “Blockpost” in Sochi. But each of the contenders for victory signified a certain film trend: if the jury of “Brother 2” had chosen it, it would have supported genre cinema, preferring “Russian Revolt” - a traditional movie that smacks of Soviet television adaptations; awards for “Moon Dad” - a movie that meets modern festival standards (variations on themes from Kusturica). “The Diary of His Teacher” is also a trend: a melodrama made in the tradition of modern auteur cinema. As a result, the Golden Rose went to Moon Dad. “The Diary of His Wife” received the Grand Prix and a special mention from the jury, so numerous fans of Alexei Uchitel’s film can also be pleased.

The only scandal - minor and rather symbolic - happened this time with the prize for best music. A few hours before the announcement of the winners, there was a rumor that the prize would be awarded to the composer of the film “The Diary of His Wife” Leonid Desyatnikov. Desyatnikov was already accepting congratulations and literally at the last moment he learned that Vladimir Martynov was the winner. Desyatnikov was awarded another prize, awarded by one of the festival sponsors, the Schweppes company. This allowed director Alexei Uchitel to declare directly from the stage that “Schweppes” had a better ear for music than the jury members.

"Brother-2" received nothing. And although genre cinema no longer needs festival support, I think it could at least count on a special mention from the jury.

Battle of the Nations
The real surprise of this year was the foreign competition - probably the strongest in all the years of the existence of the Sochi International Film Festival. Among the seventeen films there were pictures for every taste (action films, melodramas, film adaptations, comedies, auteur films), and not a single one that was passable. It is characteristic that one of the competition films - "Escort" by Michel Blanc - was purchased for Russian distribution even before the start of the festival. The opening and closing films ("The Pornographic Connection" and "The Cradle Will Rock", respectively), as well as the out-of-competition films "Christmas Pie", "The Suicide of the Virgins" and "East is East" were also acquired for domestic distribution. And this is good. After all, if a festival helps promote films on the domestic film market, this only increases its importance (all films in the Cannes competition, without exception, are released into French distribution after the festival).

Truly unique films were shown as part of international retrospectives. One of them was the retrospective “Musical under the Red Banner” (Soviet and Eastern European musical films of the 60-80s, known to our viewers from childhood and recently becoming fashionable in the festival West). Thanks to her, the annoying gap left by the cancellation of the traditional Sochi program “Unknown Masterpieces” was at least partially filled.

Decades later, such paintings as “When the Song Never Ends” (USSR, Russia, 1964) or “Ar-hi-medy” (USSR, Ukraine, 1975) look completely different, and this is not only due to the special aesthetics characteristic of for the cinema of socialist countries, but also in unexpected parallels that are only now being discovered. Thus, little compares to the shock of the Polish film "Impostor with a Guitar" (1967), where a man who looks suspiciously like Andy Warhol sits on the drums, and a social official gives a speech that strongly echoes the ideas of the founder of punk, Malcolm McLaren. In any case, it was worth watching the films in which “The song does not say goodbye to you” or “Where are you going, Odysseus, from your wife, from your children?”

Another retrospective that attracted viewers throughout the film festival was the program “South Korea: An Unknown Film Empire,” which also filled in the gaps in the education of domestic film fans - after all, unlike Hong Kong or Iranian cinema, Korean cinema is unknown in Russia. Korean films turned out to be incredibly diverse - from the meditative, “Tarkovian” “Why did Bodhidharma come to the East?” to the real commercial blockbuster “Nowhere to Hide,” which was a success all over the world and will soon be released on the screens of Moscow. Unfortunately, most Russian directors and producers ignored this program, although, as it seems to me, it is Asian cinema that can offer Russia an effective ideological model of cinema - Hollywood in form and nationally distinctive in content.

Eurotaurus
At the final press conference, Mark Rudinshtein spoke about his grandiose plans: 1) construction of an international airport in Sochi, 2) creation of a multi-hall Palace of Festivals. It was promised that starting next year, evening film screenings on the square in front of the Winter Theater will continue from May to October (in the meantime, the secret of the commercial success of this project was also revealed: Kinotavr owns a share in the trade on the square, where both alcohol and snacks are more expensive, than in other places in the city).

But the main news is a change in the concept of the foreign competition. Today, the international festival can only accept the first/second/third films of directors, which, of course, creates problems with the formation of the competition program. Starting next year, it was decided to abandon this practice, but to turn the foreign “Kinotavr” into a festival of exclusively European films (Asian and American films will be included in the out-of-competition program “Around Europe”). The organizers hope that this will help raise the festival's prestige and ultimately make it attractive not only to spectators, but also to foreign producers.

With the participation of Leonid Samotsvetov


The main award of the festival was given to "Moon Dad". On his knees is the hero of Moritz Bleibtreu (fashionable German actor), the heroine of Chulpan Khamatova (fashionable Russian actress) is sitting, the hero of Nikolai Fomenko (fashionable Russian showman) is sleeping. (Photo: NTV-Profit )