At the "Festival of Festivals" for high-quality and unknown films

ST. PETERSBURG. In the cinema "Rodina" ended the "Festival of Festivals".

June week of high-quality cinema - foreign, festival, auteur, which passed the tenth screen, but therefore no less worthy - the annual joy of St. Petersburg cinephiles for 23 years. The current program, which included a multi-genre selection of Norwegian films, documentaries from graduates of St. Petersburg State Institute of Cinematography and the workshop of Razbezhkina and Ugarov, was no exception.

In the full-meter category, paintings from the section “Unknown Cinema of St. Petersburg”, French-Russian co-production “A Trip to Mother”, scandalous film by Peter Greenaway “Eisenstein in Guanajuato” aroused great interest. Noteworthy is the fact of the presence in the program of the last tape, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale. The biopic about the creator of “Battleship Potemkin” and “Ivan the Terrible” is doomed only to a fragmented appearance at domestic festivals.

If he reached the box office, this fact for a significant part of the audience went unnoticed. This is explained without thoroughly savoring the topic quite simply. With facts, figures and erotic drawings in his hands, Greenway tells his version of Eisenstein’s Mexican journey. The story of his romance with a local guide raises the zeal of domestic zealots of morality and affects the rolling fortune of the picture.

The winner of the SCENECS International Filmfestival in the Netherlands - the film “A Trip to Mother” also received a portion of well-deserved attention. The most promising actress according to the jury of the national film award César and the owner of the “Golden Palm Branch” (Palme d’Or) of the current Cannes film festival Adele Exarchopoulos (Adèle Exarchopoulos) took part in the Russian-French film. The death of her mother, present in the form of a voiceover of Margarita Terekhova, brought not only pain from the unexpected loss, but also brought her children closer.

In the “Unknown Cinema of St. Petersburg” section, the audience was able to get acquainted with the films “Putin” and “Barak” by Valery Ogorodnikov, “The Drum” by Sergei Ovcharov, “The Myth of Leonid” by Dmitry Dolinin. The tape about the murder of Kirov, who launched the flywheel of Stalinist repression, got a chance after a 15-year non-existence to reach a large audience.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru