Handsome directors from Latin America took away all the prizes

The 45th Moscow International Film Festival has ended. It was reminiscent of Latin American film shows, which are regularly held around the world and are especially popular in Europe. It’s good that there was someone to receive awards, which is now a rarity. Filmmakers were brought from the most distant countries: Japan, Argentina, Mexico… The bulk of the prizes went to Latin America, which was represented by young and handsome directors.

“Golden St. George” for the best film was received by the Argentinean Francisco Paparella, who presented the film “Three Brothers”, filmed in a co-production of Argentina and Chile. Francisco grew up in a small town in Patagonia, where he made films. He told how amazing landscapes and incredible characters there are – real black diamonds. They are smart, but they lost their parents early, and no one taught them how to express emotions correctly. “I set up the camera and watched my characters from afar, without judging anyone. I wanted to show their toxic masculinity,” said Paparella. In Moscow, he visited the Dostoevsky Museum, located in the former Mariinsky Hospital, where the writer spent his childhood. Francisco was inspired to create The Three Brothers by The Brothers Karamazov. Receiving the award, he said: “Cinema is a window into a world that we would not otherwise know about. My painting has become a window into Patagonia.”

The day before, his Chinese colleague Dongqiang Zhuang presented the film “Grass” (“Asian Copper”), also filmed in the homeland of the young director, in a village in Fujian province, more like a metropolis. So his young hero mentions Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, compares himself with Nikolai Rostov.

The special prize for originality and creative risk was given by the jury of the main competition, led by Indian director and producer Rahul Ravel, to the crazy film Phi 1.618 by Teodor Ushev, a Russian-speaking Bulgarian animator living in Canada. Teodor came to the Russian-Ukrainian animation festival “KROK” in 2011. He is well known in the animation community. A few years ago I had a chance to visit his exhibition in Sofia, which testified to the unusualness of his view of the world. He is not looking for linear paths, he is a very versatile person. In Moscow, he presented in absentia his game picture of some perfect mechanistic people ready to leave the earth on the Vikhr spacecraft.

The award for Best Actress went to Japanese actress Kaho Sego, who played debutant Yutaka Tsunemachi in the modest film Fragile Flowers in the Stream of Days. Her character Futaba works in a flower shop, meets a young man, and both of them do not know what their future will be. For the best male role, an actor from Bolivia, Fernando Arce, who played in the film “Those who are below”, was noted. The award was received by director Alejandro Quiroga, who studied in different countries. He considers Fernando the best actor and not only in Bolivia. From the stage, Quiroga addressed those on whom his creative destiny depends: “I want to tell our Bolivian authorities that filmmakers do not have enough support.” Many Latin American directors spoke about the difficulties with funding, compared their situation with that in Europe, and this is heaven and earth.

For directing, the Mexican Tonatia Garcia, who directed Black Moon, was noted. A few hours earlier, the picture received the Audience Choice Award. This is also a debut based on real events. A large family lives in a very colorful and poor provincial town. The life of these people is poor and unpromising. Local residents come out to demonstrate, trying to resist the authorities, whose decisions change lives for the worse. The director dedicated his picture to all peoples who are fighting “for the right of access to natural resources.” Tonatya Garcia, receiving the award, recalled how Sergei Eisenstein came to shoot in Mexico, and now the authors of Black Moon maintain ties between the two countries. He especially thanked his production designer, who raised the picture to incredible heights. The frames are really very rich, they have such a bewitching texture, the beauty of poverty.

The jury of the documentary competition led by Chinese director Hao Yun – a beauty in a lovely hat and burgundy gloves above the elbow – awarded the “Vladimir Central” to Yulia Bobkova from the series “The History of Russian Prisons”. The jury considered it as a message of mercy. “This work changed me as a person and director,” Yulia Bobkova admitted and repeated the phrase: “What a prison, such a state.” The two-hour story about the famous prison loses to other pictures of the cycle, shown out of competition – “Crosses” and “Butyrka Castle”. Although everyone is limited to a standard set of talking heads, visiting the prison museum, the rumble of corridors, jingling locks and keys, distributing food and newspapers to convicts. Whoever has not been in famous prisons are the best people of the Fatherland. Three protagonists talk about themselves. One served a total of forty years, ruined several lives, and no remorse. An ideal picture emerges: read, meditate, become human. Veterans, one of whom is a hundred years old, tell about their work in the prison. He says everything he thinks, uses words for which he will not go to jail for long, but the life of this man has already passed in prison, although he is not convicted. The halls were not empty. There is a lot of interest in prisons.

The Chinese film “Everything” by Lu Helai won the short competition. A little later, Nikita Mikhalkov distinguished himself: “My young colleague apologized for speaking Chinese. The next time you’re in Cannes or Berlin, you won’t have to apologize. Everyone will understand you.”

The jury of the national competition “Russian Premieres” headed by Alexei Uchitel, one prize was not enough, although the level was average. According to the regulations, one award was supposed, and it went to the debut “Edge of the Broken Moon” by Svetlana Samoshina. All that the jury allowed beyond that was special mentions. There are two of them – “Secret Attraction” by Sergei Solovyov’s student Stasya Venkova for a daring debut and “Unit of Montevideo” – also the debut of an experienced actress Tatyana Lyutaeva, noted for a bright ensemble cast, which consisted of Alexei Serebryakov, Ksenia Rappoport, Alexander Feklistov, Evgeny Tkachuk, Agniya Ditkovskite .

Film director Pyotr Buslov was prudently appointed as the host of the ceremony. The idea worked in the finale, when his VGIK master Karen Shakhnazarov entered the stage to receive a prize for his contribution to world cinema. The laureate recalled the parting words received at the MIFF from the American director Stanley Kramer. Shakhnazarov then studied at the directing department of VGIK. His parents saw him in the lobby during the Kramer Festival. Mom encouraged dad to approach him, Shakhnazarov says. My father spoke English and asked Kramer to write me a parting word. It contained one word, “patience.” He did not leave a signature. After 10-12 years at the Montreal Film Festival, Karen Shakhnazarov presented “We are from Jazz”, and at his press conference an elderly man was sitting at the end of the hall. It was, as it turned out, Stanley Kramer. And a couple of days later, an article appeared in The New York Times, where he said that he had seen a Soviet film, and then he saw the director at a press conference, and he reminded him of a British banker. “After that, I didn’t have our tie,” Shakhnazarov said. “My mother is now looking down from the sky and thinks that it was not in vain that she once approached Stanley Kramer.”