9 films "Kinotavr-2018", which are worth watching this year

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Caucasian thriller from a student of Sokurov, an incident from the life of Leo Tolstoy and the war through the eyes of a child.

1. Anna's War

Alexey Fedorchenko's new film ("Porridge", "Angels of the Revolution") has already received rave reviews from European audiences at the Rotterdam Film Festival. The Russian premiere of the film took place in Sochi, and our audience also did not remain indifferent.

The plot of the film unfolds during the Great Patriotic War and tells the story of the two-year survival of the girl Anya in the fireplace at home after her family was shot by the Nazis.

The game of eight-year-old debutante Marta Kozlova at the festival was called a real revelation and was awarded a special jury diploma "For creating a piercing image of war through the eyes of a child." And the film itself, due to its intimacy, turned out to be positively unlike the traditionally pretentious films on military themes.

The rental of the painting is still in question.

2. History of one appointment

The story of how Leo Tolstoy tried to save the regimental clerk from the arbitrariness of the court is indeed a fact that happened in the biography of the famous writer. However, in the hands of Avdotya Smirnova, one of the best female directors in the film industry, this historical plot has acquired a much more relevant and tragic dimension: when viewed in memory, news reports about the arrest of Oleg Sentsov and Kirill Serebrennikov will pop up more than once.

It is significant that the film did not receive financial support from the Ministry of Culture, although it applied for it. Fortunately, this did not affect the result. At the film festival, the tape won the prize for the best screenplay. She also got the title of the best film, according to the audience.

At the box office from September 6.

3. Peace

According to the plot, the Slovak Mira goes from London to the Luhansk People's Republic with a bright mission - to restore the Soviet monuments battered by the war. However, the idea of peaceful coexistence of fraternal peoples dear to the hero is quickly surrendering under the onslaught of a harsh and conflict-torn reality.

The picture was shot by a graduate of the famous documentary workshop Marina Razbezhkina (one of her graduates is, for example, Valeria Gai Germanika). That is why Denis Shabaev's cinema, who had already won once at Kinotavr with his debut, turned out to be on the verge of real and fictional. All the actors in the film are non-professionals and play themselves, existing in the circumstances suggested by the director.

"Mira" is expected at the box office this year.

4. Tossing

The third film by Ivan I. Tverdovsky turned out to be, albeit not as provocative as his Zoology (about a woman with a tail) or Correction Class (about the first love of adolescents with disabilities), but much more mature. "Tossing" tells about the relationship between a mother and her seventeen-year-old son, whom she once left in a shelter near Moscow, and now she took back with the aim of using in a criminal scheme. The guy grew up with a low pain threshold, and this plays into the hands of a spree mother, affectionately calling her son a superhero.

As critics note, visually, Tverdovsky's picture is not inferior to the vaunted tapes of Zvyagintsev and boasts powerful acting transformations. As a result, the jury awarded the film for Best Cinematography and Best Actress.

Russian distributor "Podbrosov" has not yet been identified.

5. Heart of the world

In 2014, screenwriter Natalya Meshchaninova (on her account of last year's hit "Arrhythmia" and the already mentioned "Anna's War") made her debut on "Kinotavr" with a tough social drama about the timelessness of the Russian Arctic. Then "Combine" Nadezhda "" as a result was not released because of the reluctance of the authors to remove obscene language from the film. In 2018, she returned to the festival competition with the Heart of the World and received three awards at once, including the main prize.

This time, the director focused on the everyday life of one of the baiting stations, lost somewhere in the Russian wilderness. There, among foxes, deer and badgers, lives a young veterinarian Yegor. Once he left his drinking mother, and now he is trying to find a new family in the person of the station owner, his daughter and the wounded Alabai.

At the box office since September 27.

6. Russian demon

Grigory of Constantinople, who has become an odious figure in Russian cinema in several years, brought his most daring work to Kinotavr. As film critics write, “Russian Demon” rhymes simultaneously with Tarantino and “American Psychopath”, but with heart and soul inherits Dostoevsky's eternal questions.

The action of the tape takes place in modern Moscow. Svyatoslav (Ivan Makarevich) is a young artist. He is going to marry the daughter (Lyubov Aksyonova) of the owner of a large Russian bank and, in order to provide for his future family, decides to open his own restaurant. However, a number of eternal bureaucratic obstacles stand in the way of Svyatoslav.

The film won the award for Best Director. It is expected to be released this year.

7. Deep rivers

Graduates of Alexander Sokurov's workshop continue to conquer Russian cinema. In 2017, in Cannes, she took the "Tightness" prize of Kantemir Balagova. This year, at the "Kinotavr" prize "For the best debut" was awarded to Vladimir Bitokov.

"Deep Rivers" tells the story of a family of wealthy lumberjacks living on the outskirts, who entered into an irreconcilable conflict with the inhabitants of a nearby village. They write that the film turned out to be gloomy, expressive - in a word, a unique representative of the rare subgenre "Caucasian thriller".

The Russian tape distributor has not yet been determined.

8. Acid

The second laureate of the festival prize "For the best debut" was a picture of 26-year-old Alexander Gorchilin. You could see this graduate of the Moscow Art Theater School in the wildest images of Kirill Serebrennikov ("The Apprentice", "Summer") and Valeria Gai Germanika ("Yes and Yes"). However, his debut work turned out to be a perfectly verified manifesto on the life of the younger generation.

Together with theatrical playwright Valery Pecheikin, the novice director talks about the fate of the current twenty-year-olds. Two friends, Sasha and Petya, go to parties, have sex, throw that very acid. What they cannot eradicate from their carefree existence is the acid of loss and loneliness, which, with every step, eats away at them more and more from the inside.

At the box office since October 4.

9. Calendar

The only member of our list, which, alas, does not shine for hire. It's a pity, because the short film by Igor Poplauhin has already made a splash in Cannes this year, taking the second most important prize in the student film competition. Now the graduate of the Moscow School of New Cinema has been awarded in Russia as well: "Calendar" has become the best among the short film participants of the Sochi Film Festival.

The plot of his half-hour and disturbing tape tells about a middle-aged woman who goes somewhere throughout the film. She changes the bus for a ride, does not tell her acquaintances on the phone about her whereabouts. For what purpose the heroine is on her way and where - the viewer will find out for himself.

In the meantime, there is an opportunity to see Poplauhin's previous student work entitled "22".