< The 7th ARCTIC OPEN IFF selection jury has received a total of 1,228 submissions from 184 countries.>
. Of them, 110 entered the Children’s Films category. The final shortlist of the ARCTIC OPEN – Children contains 19 films from 7 countries – Russia, China, Peru, Denmark, Iran, Turkey, and Italy. This year’s non-competition program features the immersive VR sessions (eco-sessions) and the retrospective of Inessa Kovalevskaya’s cartoons (Soyuzmultfilm). ARCTIC OPEN – Children will be screening its selection of full-length feature films and shorts for family viewing on November 2-5 in Arkhangelsk, Novodvinsk and Konosha. Attendance is free.
This year’s jury for the ARCTIC OPEN – Children will be chaired by Soyuzmultfilm’s independent animation artist Tatiana Kiseleva, who joined us last year for the premiere screening of the new series of Umka. Other members include film director, screenwriter and producer Alexander Kott; theater and film actor, musician and composer Ivan Solovyov; and Pinega-born poetess Varvara Zabortseva. The selected films will be competing in four categories – Best Children’s Film, Best Director, Best Child Actor, and Special Jury Mention.
ARCTIC OPEN – Children has as its opener and closing film the shorts by Italian filmmakers – Sea Room by Carlo Prozzo and Four Seasons, a sound and musical journey by Michele Villetti. Both the filmmakers are expected to present their films to ARCTIC OPEN audience online.
This year’s ARCTIC OPEN – Children official selection features four full-length feature films – Anton Bogdanov’s Ivan Semenov: The Big Hike (6+), a sequel on the infallible visionary and prankster Ivan Semenov; Ivan Kapitonov’s Tin Can Head (12+), which is intended mostly for younger audiences but will surely excite adult viewers as well by unveiling who the “mysterious zoomers” really are; Caucasus-born Islam Satyrov’s Surviving the Aul (6+), a family film that follows an urban teenager who spends his summer at his grandfather’s in a mountain village.
Viewers are invited to join post-screening meet-the-artist sessions and the ensuing press conference, where the participating filmmakers and child actors will tell about how they got into film industry. Acting as moderator will be Yuri Yerofeyev (screenwriter, producer, journalist, member of the Children’s Television Academy) and Marina Nikitina (screenwriter, PhD (Philology), Associate Professor of M.V. Lomonosov NArFU Department of Literature).
One new venue is called Parent Chat. This year it features The 1000 Cheap Lighters, an 18+ feature film by Irina Obidova that reflects on teenage identify crisis by following the struggle for the title of school’s greatest ‘fire starter’. The post-screening discussion will be joined by top skill category relationship psychologist Olga Yarengina, who runs non-profit “New Vision”. We invite parents, teachers, social workers, psychologists and all those who work with children to join us for this session.
The remaining 15 films are shorts and include animation films, a documentary tale, and underwater version of the Sleeping Beauty ballet. Made in different countries, these short films are grouped into sessions consisting of 3 or 4 films with post-screening discussions and venues for the audiences to meet actors and filmmakers.
Traditionally, our screening venues include Mirage Cinema and Titan Arena Mall in Arkhangelsk and Druzhba Cinema in Novodvinsk. The community of Konosha will be able to view some of the competing films even before Arkhangelsk’s viewers: on the first day of November Konosha’s cinema hall Premier will be screening, as part of the Big Cinema to Small Screens program, Islam Satyrov’s Surviving the Aul. Its director will be there in person to lead post-screening session.
The non-competition programme of the ARCTIC OPEN – Children features Vladimir Marin’s The Underwater World of the Beluga Whales: VR Immersion. As last year, all VR sessions will be hosted by The Center for Social Innovations at A.A. Borisov Museum of Artistic Exploration of the Arctic.
This year’s retrospective celebrates 90th birthday of Soyuzmultfilm animation director and Honored Artist of the Russian Federation Inessa Kovalevskaya. The author of Soviet Russia’s first cartoon musical The Bremen Town Musicians made a total of around 30 cartoons so adored by children of Soviet and modern Russia. The tunes and lyrics from Kovalevskaya’s The Boat, In The Port, Chuchelo-Myauchelo, The Tale Of A Priest and His Servant Balda, to name a few, are still passed on from generation to generation. Some of them will be performed by children’s music studio “Wonderland” on the stage of the Arkhangelsk Puppet Theater on the children’s programme closing day and award ceremony on November 5.
The ARCTIC OPEN – Children programme and schedule can be found on our official website:
Programme: https://arctic-open.com/programs2023/
Schedule: https://arctic-open.com/en/calendar2023/
Free tickets will be available on October 15 and can be booked on our website or social network pages.
The films shortlisted for the ARCTIC OPEN 2023 Official Selection (December 7-10) will be announced at the press conference on October 25.
ARCTIC OPEN KinoPort is run by the Bereginya Pomor Culture Foundation with the funding from the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives, Arkhangelsk Governor’s Center, and Arkhangelsk Ministry of Culture.
The 7th ARCTIC OPEN IFF is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and lists on the RF Ministry of Culture International Film Festivals Register.
The project is co-organized by the Northern (Arctic) Federal University.
