Never-departing nature – Newspaper Kommersant No. 156 (7357) of 08/26/2022

On August 26, the 44th Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) begins its work, which will last until September 2. This year, the unsinkable film review lost its accreditation from the International Federation of Film Producers Associations and, accordingly, the prestigious category A, to which the world’s major film festivals belong. But at the same time, it still retained its international status – its various programs feature films from 65 countries, including, for example, new items straight from this year’s European festivals, although domestic cinema will be presented more widely than ever. comments Yulia Shagelman.

A lot has changed at the MIFF this year, including the composition of the organizing committee, although, of course, Nikita Mikhalkov remains its president. The new chairman of the selection committee is journalist and producer Ivan Kudryavtsev, who heads the expert council of the Golden Eagle national film award and is director of film channels at Digital Television JSC. Presenting the program of the MIFF-2022, he, in particular, noted that the festival, “despite the difficult political and cultural context, turned out to be very balanced in terms of the representation of countries”, and also emphasized that “search and discovery” will be its motto this year ( obviously, first of all, such filmmakers who can bring their films to Moscow without fear of the very context).

The main competition included 13 films, three of which are Russian.

“Garden” by Larisa Sadilova tells about elderly women living a difficult life far from Moscow, one of whom, against all odds, finds her love. The characters of Vitaly Suslin’s “Camel Arc” also became the inhabitants of a distant castle. The protagonist of this picture, a simple shoemaker from a small provincial town, dreams of going on a journey to the magical sea. Following the already established trend, the festival will not do without the Yakut cinema – it will present Dmitry Davydov’s film “Youth” about a man who, after twenty years of unsuccessful search for happiness in a big city, returns to his native village. For the director, this is the second premiere this year after Songs of Summer, shown at the Window to Europe festival in Vyborg.

Competing with these films for the main prize of the MIFF – Golden St. George – will be the films “Without prior arrangement” by Behruz Shoaibi (Iran), “The voice of one crying in the wilderness” by Cyprian Megi (Romania), “Instinct” by Dzhuboraj Shamim (Bangladesh), ” Maria. Angel of the Ocean” by Aruna Jayawardana (Sri Lanka), “Hope” by Umit Kereken (Turkey), “Carpenters of Babylon” by Paul-Anthony Mile (France), “The Visitor” by Martin Bullock (Uruguay/Bolivia), “Journey of Mastorna” by Chan Ming Chih Liao (China), Hives by Luis Basurito (Peru) and Beheading by Sinisa Cvetic (Serbia). They will be judged by a jury led by actor Yevgeny Mironov, which also includes producer Tandy Davids from South Africa, Russian director Andrey Kravchuk and cameraman Gayk Kirakosyan, who works in Russia and Turkey.

In addition to the usual three competitive programs – the main, documentary and short – this year the Moscow Film Festival also includes a fourth, which is called “Russian Premieres” (by analogy with Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons”, as Mr. Kudryavtsev explained). Apparently, the untimely closure of Kinotavr inspired the organizers of the Moscow International Film Festival to try their hand at the niche of the Russian art mainstream, which usually gathered in Sochi. The films “F20” by Arseniy Gerasimov, “Jeanne” by Konstantin Statsky, “Healthy Man” by Pyotr Todorovsky, “Kat” by Boris Akopov, “Mikula” by Ilshat Rakhimbay, “Petropolis” by Valery Fokin and “Like a Person” by Semyon Serzin participate in this competition. The jury will choose the best among them, chaired by director Sergei Ursulyak, who was accompanied by his colleague Ivan I. Tverdovsky and producer Petr Anurov.

The out-of-competition programs of the MIFF also feel the spirit of the times. For example, two of them are devoted to Iranian cinema: “Persian motives” and “Persian motives. Short meter.

A retrospective dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Film and Television of Tel Aviv University looks especially piquant next to them. Also out of competition at the festival, you can watch films from India, Southeast Asia, Soviet classics, paintings by Andrei Konchalovsky, who celebrates his 85th birthday this year, and also, for example, horror films collected in a separate program “Wild Nights”, and series premieres, including the new Russian mystical thriller Shaman and the second seasons of the popular Container and Territory.

The opening film of the MIFF will be Anton Megerdichev’s historical drama The Heart of Parma based on Alexei Ivanov’s novel about Moscow’s colonization of the Perm Territory. And it will be closed by Park Chan-wook’s modern noir “The Decision to Leave”, which received this year’s award for directing at Cannes. The Moscow Festival itself, as you can see once again, is not going anywhere yet.