"Unknown Russia": the winners of the First All-Russian Documentary Film Festival were awarded at the RUSSIA EXPO
The awards ceremony of the First All-Russian Documentary
Film Festival "Unknown Russia" was held at the RUSSIA EXPO. 36 films
in six categories were shown in the competition program of the festival.
For almost a month the audience at the RUSSIA EXPO got
acquainted with a variety of documentary projects, discovered unexplored pages
of the history of Russia, admired the beauty and authenticity of different
territories of the country. There are many new names among the participants of
the competition, who made their first steps into big cinema at the festival.
"The main impetus for the creation of this festival was
a moment related to the increasing interest in documentary filmmaking in
general. Suddenly it turned from an art for a narrow circle of connoisseurs
into a product that is interesting to a wide audience and demanded by many
venues. It is logical that new festivals should appear now. We are interested
in finding documentary content that will be interesting to the viewer and
impossible to look away from, and it is exactly such films that we are looking
for at this festival. The festival is called "Unknown Russia": on the
one hand, we can show viewers what they don't know about Russia, and on the
other hand, we can use it to find previously unknown directors, producers and
scriptwriters of documentary films, whom we will try to make famous," said
Vyacheslav Goldfeld, director of the festival.
Vyacheslav Goldfeld also emphasized that thanks to holding
the ceremony right on the site of the RUSSIA EXPO the brand of the
"Unknown Russia" festival will become more and more famous. According
to him, the festival will be held every year.
"All the movies at the festival are wonderful! They are
not for a certain viewer, they are for a person who wants to feel, feel and
wise up. The selection for the festival was tough, we tried to collect as many
different films as possible: in form, in genre, in theme, even in timing — so
that every viewer could find a picture to his taste," said Anastasia
Bezruk, program director of the festival.
The winners were chosen by an authoritative jury: Alexandra
Kosharnitskaya, first deputy CEO and editor-in-chief of the NTV channel,
Anastasia Chernobrovina, TV presenter and journalist, Vladimir Chernyshev, host
of the Segodnya program and author of NTV documentary projects, and Valeria Bondarenko,
film historian and member of the Russian Union of Cinematographers. Saida
Medvedeva, producer, screenwriter and director, was the jury chairwoman.
"Selecting the winners was difficult. Several films
competed fiercely with each other. They are very different, you can't compare
them: they are about different things, with different vocabulary, made in
different ways. But they are all wonderful. We focused on professionalism, on
the language of the authors. These ones have their own face. Another important
point is whether the movie excited, made you think, worry, taught you something
new in the profession," said the chairwoman of the jury of the festival
Saida Medvedeva.
The grand prix of the documentary film festival
"Unknown Russia" was won by the films "Let Me Win" directed
by Maria Finkelstein and Svetlana Muzychenko, as well as "Yenisei
Marathon" by Vladimir Tarasov.
The best film in the "Ethnoculture" nomination was
"The Book of Steppes" by Mikhail Merzlikin, in the
"History" nomination — "The Unfreezing Port of Hope" by
Daria Khrenova, in the "Character" nomination — "Seven Days of
Autumn" by Alexei Golovkov, in the "Production and Technological
Cinema" nomination — "Young Specialist" by Sergei Alexandrov.
The winner in the category "Popular Science
Cinema" was "The King of the Mountain" by Maria Lind and Daria
Khrenova, and the main prize among the films in the nomination
"Geography" was won by Tatiana Soboleva's "Lewis Carroll's
Journey Through the Mirror, and What He Found There".
In the special nomination "Time Captured" — the
choice of TASS — the victory went to the picture "In the Embrace of the
Amur Tiger" by Ksenia Kirsanova.
The film forum was organized by NTV TV channel,
Gazprom — Media Holding and the Association of Producers of Visual Documentary
and Corporate Cinema with the support of PJSC Gazprom.
