Kusturica appreciated the talent of Mikhalkova: Anna was surprised that he knows her

The main theme of this festival is “Indigenous Peoples of the World”. If you formally approach the declared slogan, then many things will seem random and unrealized to the end. But as one of the jury members of the domestic debuts competition, production designer Sergei Fevralev, rightly noted, all the films presented were about the ethnic group – Chechnya and Altai, Moscow youth, about the subculture richly represented in many films by novice filmmakers.

The Golden Taiga Prize for the best domestic debut film, now named after the founder and long-term president of the festival, Sergei Solovyov, was awarded to Malika Musaeva’s The Cage Looks for a Bird. She was born in Grozny, and when the war began there, she left with her parents for Ingushetia, and then to Germany. Later, the family returned to the Caucasus, settled in Nalchik, where Malika entered the directing workshop of Alexander Sokurov, which he recruited at the Kabardino-Balkarian University. She was among 12 of his students, who are now known throughout the cinema world, but almost never remembered at home. Now Malika lives in Germany, where she graduated from the magistracy of the Hamburg Media School. Most recently, her debut film participated in the second most important competition at the Berlinale, and was shown for the first time in Russia at the “Spirit of Fire”. Not everyone accepted it. It was filmed in the Chechen language and in the Chechen villages and seems to be woven from psychological states. Young friends dream of leaving their native places to live the way they want, and not as their parents decide for them. It would seem that nothing special is happening. They lie on the grass, share their secrets, exchange a few phrases on the go with their peers, hold their eyes on something, and this is the aura of this film. This is the story of Chechen women of different ages defending the right to freedom. And almost every one of them has a life like everyone else – usually, contrary to dreams. The jury also noted the camera work of Dmitry Nagovskiy and the actress Khadija Bataeva for the best female role. Director Aleksey Mizgirev, who headed the jury, said that it is always difficult to start filming, but if you are guided by something experienced, which hurts you, which hurts you, the truth that haunts you, what you love, then it becomes a little easier, and there is a director who will become your teacher, producers, and in the end you get a prize for your debut. In the case of Malika Musaeva, everything was like that.

Documentary film «Vad’d’a. Ordeal” by Nikita Dobrynin, another student of Sokurov, but already from his St. Petersburg workshop, was awarded the “Silver Rose” for the best work with music. In this case, the jury did not evaluate the music as such, but how the director used it, where and why he put it, but somewhere he completely abandoned it. It was created by the St. Petersburg composer Vigdische Fairhuis, who arranged the melodies of the vozhan into melodies. This award, according to the director, is important not so much for him as for the leaders themselves. This is a small people living on the shores of the Gulf of Finland in the village of Luzhitsa. The leaders are recognized as a small people, but it turns out that they do not have their own land. After a port was built nearby, the fish left. New construction is advancing on the territory of the Vozhan, their cemetery. And there is a mention of this people in the Novgorod birch bark letter of the 9th century. If in the middle of the 19th century its number was 5 thousand, then in 2011, according to the census, there were about forty vozhan left. As one of the representatives of this people will say, you are still alive, but everything is falling apart. In the USSR, the leaders were recognized as unreliable people, they were resettled throughout the USSR. They had to hide their nationality. They were sent to a concentration camp in Estonia, and then they could not return to their native places. One of the heroines calls the meanness of the policy towards her small people. The young director made a movie not only about a specific Finno-Ugric people, but about a departing culture. Many viewers before this film did not know at all that such a people existed.

One of the social platforms supported the picture of another student of Sokurov, filmed in Kabardino-Balkaria – “Knots” by Oleg Khamokov, noting her high professionalism and impeccable psychological accuracy in developing the genre of family drama. Oleg is from the first workshop of Alexander Sokurov, like Malik. His film was shot in the Kabardian language.

The prize for the best male role was awarded to the performer of the role of … moth – Belarusian actor Vladimir Svirsky in Anton Yermolin’s Niche. The director himself was awarded the special jury prize for directing, and on the day of the premiere he was in incredible excitement. His hero Slavik Tikhonov is a strange person, outwardly absolutely inconspicuous. As Anton will say, there are many of them, especially in the subway, and looking at them, one cannot imagine what is going on in their head. The hero of Svirsky leads a video blog, he has 13 subscribers. He collects good, scans people, telling them stories about collecting negative energy, charges jars, covers them with foil and stores them in a closet. This nondescript person imagines himself to be a psychic, but in fact – a mole, which eventually becomes the star of some secret society.

Part of the film was filmed in the shabby interiors of the capital’s Cinema House, which makes a strong impression on neophytes. Yes, and on young filmmakers too. When Anton Yermolin was a student there, he was amazed at how one of the masters was seen off on his last journey, the appearance of living classics of cinema. The whole setting was incredibly unrealistic. All of this was shown on the screen. It is in this abode of sorrow that the moth becomes a kind of deity, gains strength. This is a picture of a free young man looking at life with a fresh look, putting everything in its place, showing the full extent of the world’s madness.

The international jury, headed by Pavel Lungin, noted “Early Eyes” by Wang Chun-Hung from Taiwan and “On Both Sides of the Pond” by Partha Saurabha from India. And the main prize – again the “Golden Taiga” for the best debut film – was awarded to the Iranian “Parallax” by Shahram Ebrahimi. A theater actor, director and playwright, popular in his homeland, made his film debut at almost forty years old and made a film about how a film debut turned into a tragedy for the heroine. My husband didn’t like this whole thing. And shortly before filming, the heroine received a face burn, and there was reason to believe that this was not an accident. All foreign laureates were personally present at the festival and were able to receive awards.

Emir Kusturica, who became the president of the festival after the death of Sergei Solovyov, never came to Khanty-Mansiysk. He broke his leg and had surgery. But the presidential prize had to be handed over, and he made a non-trivial choice, amazing his owner. On behalf of the newly-made president, a letter was read in which Kusturica outlined his decision to present the award “for creating unique female images” to Anna Mikhalkova. In particular, it said: “Anya, you are a wonderful great Russian actress, you are always different, reliable, and like a real actress you know how to be tragic, but you are not afraid to be funny. You succeed in all genres, you embody all facets of the Russian national character. Bravo, Anna! Mikhalkova was embarrassed and, in turn, asked herself questions: “Did Kusturica write this for sure? How does he know me? When I heard about the gallery of female images, I thought: who is he talking about?