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Cinema and frost: How was the 21st International Premiere Festival “Spirit of Fire”?

Your obedient film editor spent the first weekend of March according to his position – this is how I changed the Moscow landscape to the frosty Khanty-Mansiysk and the box office premieres to festival films. What are we talking about? About the International Film Festival “Spirit of Fire”, held for the 21st time in Ugra from March 3-6, Begins. During these four days, Khanty-Mansiysk became a shooting place for all the creams of the capital’s cinema crowd, so Anna Mikhalkova, Sergey Garmash, Yulia Peresild, Ksenia Surkova, Pavel Lungin and others posed for the paparazzi. The opening of the festival was later that evening enjoying the company of a friend after an informal party already at the hotel.

In general, the festival, which prepares many surprises for its participants, is about the cultural program as well as the thought-provoking cinema every day. At the arrival of the Moscow delegation, for example, the traditional ritual holiday “Tylashch Pori” (bear-curing feast) and the competition of reindeer herders in the ethnographic open-air museum “Torum Maa” fell, and the team “Spirit of Fire”, Vyacheslav Butusov and Artem Kid’s “Arctic” organized the concerts of Artem Kid, a multimedia exhibition called “Artists inspired by “Artists born in the North” and for the first time! – Organized a business program within the framework of the festival. I will not lie if I say that life in Moscow makes you believe that it is difficult to surprise and surprise, but Khanty-Mansiysk can certainly convince you of this. The Archeopark, the Museum of Nature and Man, its sculptural compositions and (especially) the snow-covered tops of Christmas trees are proof of this.

But back to the main topic – about cinema, of course. This year, directors from all over the world participated in competitive and non-competitive programs (selected works from Russia and 16 other countries), and Spirit of Fire hosted India as a guest country for the first time in its history. .

But, of course, the work of domestic directors struck my heart – so I once again fell in love with the work of Natalia Meshchaninova (“Alice Can’t Wait”, “My Mother’s Penguins”) and her new film “One”. Little Night Secret”, ah, I still think, and also met the absolutely wonderful film “The Cage Searches for a Bird”, which Alexander Sokurov’s student Malika Musaeva wrote about a 17-year-old Chechen girl who dreams of freedom.

The latter, by the way, did not leave Khanty-Mansiysk without awards, taking the victory “For the best camera work”, “For the best female role” and the eponymous “Golden taiga”. Sergei Solovyov “For the best first film”. True, the main prize of the festival – “Golden Taiga” for the best debut film – nevertheless went to the film “Parallax” by Iranian director Shahram Ebrahimi. And while “digesting” everything that I saw for a week, Khanty-Mansiysk rests from guests. But it won’t be long, see you soon.


The Spirit of Fire cultural program was prepared with the support of Gazprom Neft. The Roscongress Foundation is the communication partner of the film festival. Since 2002, the festival has been held with the support of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug – Yugra Government.


Photo: Alexey Molchanovsky

Source: People Talk

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