< St. Petersburg to resound the echoes of the 5th Arctic Countries Film Festival ARCTIC OPEN>
On April 28 and 29, St. Petersburg-based Lenfilm Studio will be hosting two film directors with Best Feature Film awards from the 5th Arctic Countries Film Festival ARCTIC OPEN, held in Arkhangelsk in December 2021.
On April 28, the audience of Lenfilm Studio will be shown Yakut anthology film Yt. Defined by jury as “modern rendition of northerners’ life in the best narrative traditions,” Yt won Arctic Open’s Best Feature Film Script award.
Presenting the “anthology of good and evil neighbors” in St. Petersburg will be Stepan Burnashev. Yt is a collaborative effort two famous Yakut directors, Stepan Burnashev and Dmitry Davydov.
The film holds two awards from the 37th Warsaw International Film Festival (2021, Warsaw) – Special Jury Award “for pure cinematic look at simple everyday life” and NETPAC Award – Special Mention.
Yt features seven stories about good and evil neighbours. A young son takes his father’s gun without asking and lends it to a friend. A young man brings his bride to his home, but the meeting with his relatives turns into a dangerous conflict and only the village head can prevent a tragedy. The head of a young family sells the house of a relative and accidentally loses money because of this. His relationship with his wife begins to deteriorate. Will they be able to keep the family together? All the characters will have to make a difficult choice
The other Arctic Open award-winning film to be presented in St. Petersburg is Rinat Tashimov’s debut feature Second Sun. Rinat Tashimov is a playwright and stage actor (Kolyada Theater). His Second Sun holds a number of major awards and among them Windows to Europe FF’s Best Emerging Filmmaker. The film follows the inhabitants of a Tatar village whose national character is intertwined with local customs.
Two Tatar women, Latifa and Mesavara, live in a god-forsaken village in Eastern Siberia, where heathern ways are ineradicable. Both have lost their husbands and are trying to figure out how to live on their own. As the story unfolds, their and the lives of other inhabitants become closely intertwined.
The screening will take place on April 29 at Lenfilm Studio, 10 Kamennoostrovsky Ave., St. Petersburg.
“We hope that by showing films from the official selection of Arkhangelsk’s international film festival, big cities can help promote independent Russian filmmakers and their films, which seem to be dabbling in so many genres, while also introducing their viewers to the North and Arctic areas. Lenfilm Studio has been Arctic Open’s long-standing partner. Its films appear on our official selection and non-competition program since 2016, contributing also to the film marathons and campaigns of Bereginya Pomor Culture Foundation here in Arkhangelsk Region,” said Tamara Statikova, Arctic Open IFF director.
In 2019, Lenfilm Club and its Arctic Cinema venue at the 5th International Forum “Arctic – The Territory of Dialogue” screened the films that premiered at Arctic Open IFF. In 2020, both partners have contributed to “Through Time” campaign in memory of June 22, 1941. In 2021, five films produced by Lenfilm Studio were shown at Arctic Open Film Marathon. They were seen by more than 4,000 people in remoter parts of Arkhangelsk Region, in Komi Republic and Sverdlovsk Region.
This project is supported by the Presidential Grant Fund for Cultural Initiatives and is partnered by Lenfilm Studio, Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Arkhangelsk Region’s Representative Office in St. Petersburg.
