Translated material
Girls for export
Results of the Moscow International Film Festival
Nikita Mikhalkov spoke about this several times during the competition and repeated it again from the stage during the closing ceremony - the MIFF team put together a program of films in record time , each of which could grace any international festival. Judging by the prize distribution, the MIFF has seriously competed with at least one international forum: the Kinoshock film festival of the CIS and Baltic countries, which takes place every autumn in Anapa.Among the four non-acting awards of the festival, only one is not directly related to the film space of the former USSR, but it also has a Russian accent. The prize for directing was won by Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore with the film “The Stranger,” a whimsical psychothriller in which the main character is a girl from Ukraine who becomes a sex slave in Italy. Her role was played by an actress from Lev Dodin's theater, Ksenia Rapoport. (By the way, in one of the out-of-competition hits - the film "Export-Import" by the favorite of festival Europe, Ulrich Seidl - the heroine, who works as a cleaner in an Austrian nursing home, is also Ukrainian, only she is played not by a professional actress, but by a nurse from Donetsk, Ekaterina Rak).
The main prize of the “Perspectives” competition went to the not at all monotonous, as the chairman of the “promising” jury Ulrich Gregor emphasized, the Latvian “Monotony”. For its director, Jurius Puskus, this is a debut in feature film, but shot in a style that does not let you forget that Puskus was originally a documentary director. Since “Perspectives” has only one prize, and “Monotony” received the majority of votes, the position of those who remained in the minority was also voiced from the stage. A special mention was given to the Russian film “Breathe” - a film by thirty-two-year-old native of Yakutia, theater director Sergei Potapov.
There were no unanimous decisions among the jury of the main competition, as the chairman of the Grand Jury, Australian director Fred Skepsi, told the public gathered at Pushkinsky. And the final meeting of the jury, he said, was the longest in the history of the Moscow festival. The result of these vigils was the awarding of the main prize, the Golden George, to the film Traveling with Pets, directed by Vera Storozheva, shot by one of the most fashionable and skillful Russian cinematographers, Oleg Lukichev. (There is no cinematographer’s prize at the Moscow International Film Festival yet, but Nikita Mikhalkov promised to introduce a prize for the script next year.)
Documentary maker Storozheva made her debut in feature films with the film “Sky, Plane, Girl” with Renata Litvinova in the title role (this year Litvinova is in the Grand Festival Jury), which seems to be in the category of art cinema, then she tried to work in the mainstream, which resulted in the films “The Frenchman” and “Greek Holidays”, and finally, at the suggestion of producer Sabina Eremeeva, she made a film that can only be called “festival”.
“Golden George”, which went to “Travel with Pets”, became an example of festival luck. The co-producer of the film is the current head of the Kinotavr festival, Igor Tolstunov, and for ethical reasons the film could not be presented in Sochi. It seems to me that in his competition, this picture about a sophisticated, beautiful attendant from a tiny stop (Ksenia Kutepova) and her relationship with the owner of an ideal figure “from World Class”, a truck driver (Dmitry Dyuzhev), could hardly qualify for the main prizes . But the film fit into the MIFF solitaire competition extremely well.
Special prize of the MIFF - to the Russian-language film directed by Aleko Tsabadze “Russian Triangle” (Georgia), where a young trainee in the homicide department is played by Artem Tkachenko, and Konstantin Khabensky is one of two brothers who fought in Chechnya and followed the Chechen trail into peace life. Justifying its decision, the jury stated that the film reflects the openness of the MIFF in relation to sensitive topics, and this quality of the Moscow International must be maintained.
The prize for best actor was given to Fabrice Luchini (“Molière”, France), who played not the main role, but the second role - Mr. Jourdain. Kirsty Stubo (“Opium”, Hungary) was named best actress. Unfortunately, both left Moscow literally the day before the closing of the festival and were not present at the ceremony.
For several years in a row, at the closing ceremony of the MIFF they have been awarded a special prize. Stanislavsky “I Believe!”, the owner of which is an outstanding world-class actor. This year “I Believe!” given to Daniel Olbrychski, who delivered his acceptance speech in good Russian and appropriately quoted Okudzhava several times.
The presentation of the prize was to be preceded by a video clip of Olbrychsky's roles, accompanied by the Terem Quartet. But then a funny incident occurred, which, if it had not happened on its own, would have been worth inventing - for greater spontaneity. After some confusion, the director of the ceremony, Alexey Agranovich, ran out of the hall to Nikita Mikhalkov, who was standing on stage, and began to quickly explain something. “We don’t have enough chairs,” Mikhalkov announced loudly, “so we have to ask the jury to leave the stage, otherwise the musicians have nothing to sit on. We’ll cut it out on TV.” The jury went into the hall, chairs were found (two sets remained on the stage), and the Terem Quartet captured the attention of the audience. This, by the way, was the only concert number of the program - director Agranovich and screenwriter Gennady Josefavicius, who invented the ceremony, persistently adhere to the principle of “nothing superfluous” - the only reasonable one, in my opinion, when holding such events.
The ceremony began with a mini-film by Claude Lellouche from the almanac, dedicated to the sixtieth anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival. Lelouch's new full-length film, "The Railway Romance," closed the festival, but that's not the only reason why the Cannes reminiscence turned out to be very opportune. The fact is that the main event of the 29th MIFF for many was the low-budget Romanian film shown in Pyotr Shepotinnik’s “8S Films” program - winner of the Palme d’Or at the last Cannes Film Festival “4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days”. For director Christian Mungiu, this is his debut in a feature film, and how he manages to keep the viewer in suspense for two hours without any visual tricks with this chamber story for four people is one of those mysteries in cinema that remain unsolved. Those who did not see “4 Weeks” at the festival should definitely watch this film in cinemas this winter - the film was acquired by the company “Cinema Without Borders”.