New Cinema: International Filmmaker’s Debut Festival opens in Khanty-Mansiysk

The 21st International Film Festival “Spirit of Fire” has opened in Khanty-Mansiysk, and Serbian director Emir Kusturica, who won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, has become its president.

During the four days of the film forum, the audience will be presented with more than 70 films from 16 countries, among them – the work of directors from France, Argentina, Japan, China and India.

“We manage to maintain the status of internationality. The program is very representative, we have collected excellent debuts from all over the world and their authors are trying to come to us, this is important, and I consider this a great achievement,” said Maria Zvereva, Vice President of Spirit of Fire.

Governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug – Ugra Natalya Komarova said that the region is creating a system to support film projects and new programs to develop young talents. “One of the areas we will develop is the exchange of film students with our partner countries. This year, we have made a great emphasis on film dialogue with India, the guest country of our festival,” she said.

The main theme of the festival this year is the indigenous peoples of the world. Participants from Russia will present several films at once in Altaic, Kabardian, Chechen and Finno-Ugric languages. These paintings tell stories about life away from big cities, the search for family happiness and the fate of women of different generations.

The best Russian film in the nomination “For the Preservation of Cultural Traditions” will receive a special award from the long-term general partner of the film festival, Gazprom Neft.

“Yugra has become a truly native region for our company with a long history of relations. Here, together with our partners, we implement projects that improve the quality of people’s lives. And the Spirit of Fire festival has become not only the most important local cultural event, but has been making Khanty-Mansiysk a part of international cinematography for many years. This year, thanks to a professional team led by Emir Kusturica, we have prepared an excellent program. Now the festival has entered a new stage of development and, relying on the traditions laid down by the founders, is taking an important step forward,” said Alexander Dybal, Member of the Management Board of Gazprom Neft.

Among the famous films that started on the “Spirit of Fire” are the legendary “Boomer”, “Garpastum”, the drama “Italian” and the film “How Vitka Garlic Carried Lyokha Shtyr to the Nursing Home”. It was in Khanty-Mansiysk that the premieres of films by Alexei German Jr., Pyotr Buslov, Ivan Vyrypaev, Kira Kovalenko took place. In different years they became the owners of the main prize of the festival – “Golden Taiga”.

Emir Kusturica has been heading the Spirit of Fire festival since 2023. It is symbolic that in 1981 he received his first award at the Venice Film Festival from the hands of the founder of the “Spirit of Fire” and the author of the cult film “Assa” Sergei Solovyov. As the Serbian director noted, it is very important for him to continue the traditions of the festival and help young authors who want to create good films.

“This festival remains a temple of culture, because the big film festivals of the world no longer glorify the author – they glorify the “project”. And independent cinema shows the human soul, talks about the issues of life. As long as there are such events, art will not die. Here in Russia, I feel the cultural origins of our literature and our cinema,” he stressed.