On April 20, the 45th Moscow International Film Festival kicked off in Moscow. It will last until April 27, the program includes 200 films from 60 countries, including Sweden, France, Denmark, Norway, China, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Colombia and others. Russian media has learned what film professionals think of the 2023 festival and which bands they recommend paying attention to.
Egor Moskvitin, film critic, selector of the out-of-competition program Wild Nights MIFF
“It can be said that MIFF continues to adhere to the principle of competitive parties, when there is no priority for some countries, there are no privileges for some countries and a ban for others. The program contains many films from East and West, both disconnected from reality and commenting on it with sharpness and pain. This is probably the main function of any festival, to bring people together, to maintain the possibility of dialogue,” Moskvitin is sure.
The most important thing, from the point of view of a kind of ethics, of an energetic message to the country, to the city, to the world, is the screening of the film “Bullfinch”, which opens the festival. This is a new work by Boris Khlebnikov and his co-author Natalya Meshchaninova, it is a film adaptation of a Soviet novel about sailors who, clashing with the elements, understand the values, meaning, importance and naturalness of solidarity and the struggle for each other.
This story has been modernized, now almost modern teenagers, sailor students and experienced sea wolves, fishermen, played by Alexander Robak, Timofey Tribuntsev and Yevgeny Syty, unfortunately, died, this is his last role. These two generations – absolutely rich, scattered and relaxed zoomers and the older generation of men who have already joined hands – suddenly unite and become real men. It’s a movie that’s incredible in its energy and its tragedy, it’s a huge social commentary.
For the rest of the sections, I advise you to watch films from China – “Body Exchange” and “Remorse”. These are examples of a super-grossing Chinese genre-based entertainment film that made a lot of money at home and is now telling us some important stories.
In the movie “Remorse” we are talking about lawyers who, many years after the injustice that has happened, are trying to get justice. It’s something like a crime thriller “Memories of Murder”, only the events take place in Hong Kong.
Body Swap is a throwback to the old, long-forgotten formulas of rom-coms, where people suddenly find themselves in someone else’s shoes, and despite supposedly being a kind of entertainment film, it’s a story about sympathizing with someone else’s experience.
My personal interest, as someone who programs the Wild Nights section, which shows the craziest experimental horror films, thrillers, horror, fantasy, dark comedies, is to invite you to some films in this section. One of them is called “Magnum 578” – it’s a Vietnamese action movie about a trucker who takes revenge on the mafia for his daughter. It’s a bit like John Wick, with the same potential, but it’s a very artistic film, it was the Oscar nominee from Vietnam last year.
Another interesting film that allows us to observe the principle of equality between entertainment and a kind of social function is the film Crazy Heidi from Switzerland, which describes the utopian future of Switzerland in the style of a black comedy, where everyone is forced to eat chocolate, drink it with milk, and eat cheese, and people with lactose intolerance are subject to discriminatory laws. The little girl Heidi rebels against this totalitarian state, and an incredible massacre begins that will surprise everyone.
Finally, a very cool movie called Pest, which describes the history of protests in modern India: religious and ethnic clashes. During one of these encounters, two people find themselves in an abandoned house, each hiding their identity. One of them is Indian, the other is Muslim, and they hide their true colors from each other, but in the end they unite to fight the demon that lives in this house. In other words, it is proof that a horror film can in fact be a social, political and civil cinema.
Vitaly Mansky, documentary filmmaker, president of the international festival of auteur documentary films “Artdocfest”
“You should pay attention to the fact that the Moscow International Film Festival is now more of a festival of Asian and Eastern countries, which used to be held in the city of Tashkent. According to the list of countries participating in the festival, this there Of course, this is due to the fact that all the major cinematic powers boycott Russia in general, and Russian cultural projects, in particular those organized by people like the president of the Moscow Festival, in particular,” said Mansky told Russian media.
I can’t say that I find the time to carefully follow the MIFF selections, but some general information that appears in the feed suggests that, for example, the competition and the documentary film program, which I follow professionally, whatever my attitude towards the festival, was once quite bright and representative. There was competitive programming, which was worthwhile, as well as out-of-competition programming, which was a hit at all the major world documentary festivals. Now there is no such thing.
The very fact that of the seven films in the international documentary competition, three come from Russia, two from China and Iran and something else along those lines is also quite telling, regardless of the quality of the films. Everything is deplorable, as deplorable things usually are in Russia.
The Moscow Film Festival has been held since 1935 and has been declared an annual event since 1995. The winners of its award – “Golden George” – in different years were paintings by Federico Fellini, the Dardenne brothers and other internationally renowned film masters recognised. The main theme of the 45th MIFF is the issue of youth, which is devoted to a program in its own right.
The main competition program of the festival includes 12 films from Russia, China, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Bulgaria, France, Bangladesh and other countries. The expert jury, which will select the best films, included director Alexei Uchitel, actress Anna Snatkina, actor Alexei Guskov, actress Svetlana Ivanova and others.
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