Window to cinema
Throughout the current week, the cultural life of Minsk has been focused on the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad. On November 4th, People’s Artist of Belarus Aleksandr Yefremov effectively and decisively smashed a plate on a tripod, thus declaring the Minsk International Film Festival open as chairman. As in previous years, the 28th edition of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad has remained true to its mission — to show the latest films that are hard to see anywhere else, but not to forget about the most potentially box office premieres of the fall. Perhaps that is why You Can’t Cry thriller directed by a Russian director Natalya Nazarova was chosen as the film of the opening ceremony, which the audience is scheduled to see a little later in the Belarusian box office.PHOTO BY BELTA
Nevertheless, the screening was preceded, as usual, by the red carpet, which brought together the entire cream of the domestic (and, if we take it more broadly, the Soviet) film industry. The opening ceremony of the festival turned out to be very concise, but in compliance with all traditions. One of them is the presentation of the special award of the President ‘For the preservation and development of the traditions of spirituality in cinema’. This year, the famous film director, Honored Art Worker Vyacheslav Nikiforov, who celebrated his 80th birthday this year, received an honorary award from the hands of Deputy Prime Minister Igor Petrishenko.
Star glamor and women’s discourse reigned at the opening. Natalya Varley has expectedly become the main heroine of the carpet. She is a frequent guest on the Belarusian land. The ‘prisoner of the Caucasus’ was accompanied on the red carpet by an actress and director Natalya Bondarchuk and Director of the Guild of Russian Film Actors Valeria Gushchina.
The jury of the main feature film competition Dmitry Astrakhan feels himself like at home in Minsk. He has a little less ‘experience’ of presence at the festival — 26 years. Aleksey Ryazantsev, CEO of Karo Premier Film Company, is discussing acute issues and prospects of the modern film process together with Astrakhan these days.
Until November 11th, viewers and jury members will see almost a hundred films, appreciate a dozen directorial debuts and a multicoloured palette of genres: from crime to science fiction, including experimental and documentary films, animation, comedies, dramas and melodramas.
