Like-minded festival, or a platform for free speech

PLES. At the 11th Andrey Tarkovsky IFF, the first shows were held as part of the main and documentary competitions.

Six summer days in the Ivanovo region - from June 13 to 18 - a concentrated bunch of good films, informal communication of like-minded people. The annual "Mirror" is a platform for free speech of talented people who have chosen the risky path of author’s cinema. In the same way as Andrei Tarkovsky once, who, according to film critic Maya Turovskaya, did not identify art and craft, who did not consider it as a source of guaranteed income. This year, Andrei Arsenievich would have turned 85. Thirty of them were given to his beloved work, thirty belong to eternity. 17 of 20 years of work in Soviet cinema, Tarkovsky, by his own admission, was hopelessly unemployed. In periods of rare gleams, masterpieces were born.

The rich program of the festival includes contests of feature films and documentaries, retrospectives of paintings by Andrei Konchalovsky and Dmitry Geller, and programs for animated films. In the framework of the “Mirror“ Artdocfest ”contest (curated by Vitaliy Mansky), the first shows of copyright films from Armenia, Russia, Estonia, and France took place.

The touching, sincere tape of Arman Yeritsyan “One, Two, Three” is a story about Armenia through the prism of human characters, joyful and sad events in the life of the main characters. Films “Open Air” and “Hello, Fellini”, shot in Russia, were warmly received by the public and colleagues. An invitation from the Bars Media film studio in Yerevan opened a new page in his work and the opportunity to return to his homeland. The first picture was a beautiful “Kanagodohodets” - a co-production of Armenia, Japan, France, the USA. Later Love For Sale, Donkeymentary commissioned by National Geografic, and other films were filmed.

To shoot the selfie film “Rabbits in the headlights”, the director and screenwriter Alisa Erokhina used two mobile phones. The result was a documentary avant-garde "postdoc" with game scenes and parallel plots. The picture “Exemption: Instructions for Use” by Alexander Kuznetsov on the struggle for his rights to patients of a psycho-neurological clinic is the winner of the Artdocfest 2016 Grand Prix.

“Come free” Ksenia Okhapkina - the everyday life of a small Chechen village, centuries-old traditions, contradictions, life and death, going hand in hand. The picture is the winner of a special jury prize in the middle-length section of the international documentary film festival in Amsterdam. “All roads lead to Afrin” - the work of the graduate of the School of Documentary Films Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov Arina Adzhu about finding his father in a Syrian city on the verge of war.

Ahead - a few more competitive days.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru