Major Movies of the Year Award at White Elephant

MOSCOW. The winners of the XIX White Elephant Prize have been announced at the Cinema House.

The verdict of the Expert Council in the gaming category did not come as a surprise. The victory of the film by Andery Konchalovsky “Paradise” in three main categories (the best film, the best work of the director and cameraman) was predictable. The black and white arthouse drama has already collected a whole collection of awards at prestigious international festivals in the USA, Israel, Spain, and won the Venetian Silver Lion. The audience will have the opportunity to agree with the jury’s decision or consider it a curtsy in the direction of a potential Oscar winner, on January 19, when Russian-German co-production will be released widely.

Festival hits of the season - "Apprentice" and "Zoology" were awarded four awards. Serebrennikov’s film received awards for the music of Ilya Demutsky, the supporting actress (Svetlana Bragarnik) and the Voice of Young Critics prize. Tverdovsky’s painting won only in one nomination. Actress Natalya Pavlenko was named the best performer of the main female role, playing an employee of the procurement department of the zoo, which has a tail. The presence of atavism is a direct road to the clan of the outcast, the fate of which was devoted to the previous film of Tverdovsky - “Correction Class”. For Pavlenko, this is the third award. She received previous ones at Kinotavr and the Cottbus International Film Festival. A fantastic story is a mirror image of real life, in which intolerance towards dissenters and dissenters, and therefore rejected, is practically the norm.

Timofei Tribuntsev and Boris Kamorzin are named the best male performers of the main and second plan in the philosophical parable with elements of the clerical comedy Nikolai Dostal “The Monk and the Demon”. The script by Yuri Arabov, referring simultaneously to “Faust, to the writings of the founder of biblical philology, the Greek theologian and philosopher Origenes Adamantius, and“ The Master and Margarita ”Bulgakov, also received the well-deserved“ Elephant ”.

The “Event of the Year” was the paintings “Relatives” and “In the Sunshine” by the famous documentary filmmaker Vitaliy Mansky - a close and unashored view of events in North Korea and Ukraine. The film "Too Free Man" by Krichevskaya and Fishman, dedicated to Boris Nemtsov, was named the best documentary. It includes rare documentary footage - part of a huge archive compiled over a quarter of a century, and an interview with a bright and charismatic opposition leader. The release date is 23. 02. 2017. Director Alexander Sokurov was awarded the special prize “For a Civic Position”, whose speech at a meeting of the Culture and Art Council in St. Petersburg can be called an act of civic courage.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru