Molodist Film Festival Begins with Short Length Jokes and Truthful Tragedies
The year’s major filmmaking event takes place in Ukraine as previously announced, at the usual time and place
The 38th Molodist Film Festival was launched at the Ukraine Palace in Kyiv on Saturday night, Oct. 18.
The usual scenario was played out: speeches by organizers, ranking officials, the head of the jury (this time the US actor Armand Assante), then a brief show, and the screening of the film opening the Molodist IFF. The actual competition started on Sunday, involving young film directors from several dozen countries who vied in the three main nominations: student film, short, full-length production, and of course the Grand Prix. In fact, one winner of the Scythian Deer Grand Prix is known: Roman Balaian and his film Birds of Paradise, conferred for a meritorious contribution to cinematography. In fact, his film launched the Molodist IFF in Ukraine. Roman Balaian and the leading actors addressed the IFF audience in Kyiv.
Birds of Paradise is a tragic story dating back to 1981, when the Soviet regime was at its peak. However, despite the easily identifiable attributes like the KGB, samizdat, dissidents, secret police surveillance, KGB stoolies and informers, the overall hopeless atmosphere, Balaam’s new production is not totally political, rather an existentialist drama reflecting the author’s ideas about freedom and the cost of a choice that sometimes has to be made in conditions having nothing to do with freedom. The important thing is that this film, set in Kyiv, is dubbed in Ukrainian.
The director made sure of this, even though all his previous productions were in Russian. And the final scene is accompanied by a song performed by Okean Elzy.
The festival routine started on Sunday morning with a contest of student films. The contest of directors-to-be soothed with diversity: documentary films, fiction and animation films shot in different techniques adjoined each other here. Some of the young film-makers prefer the genre a cinema anecdote, like, for example, British directors Richard Addlesee and David S. Noble. The film Farewell/ Rastanak by Croatian Irena Skoric was done in a smarter and more masterly way.
Swiss Marina Rosset managed to shoot a mini-tragicomedy: her film A Bear Paw/ La Main de l’Ours is a short fairytale about three brothers. The British-Bulgarian fiction film Goleshovo directed by Ilian Metev is full of funny and moving things. The film Man directed by Mina Joseph, the US, made an impression of a really adult and mature work.
It is gratifying that the Ukrainian participants of the contest are by no means inferior to their foreign colleagues. The film Adolescence by Dmytro Sukholytkyi-Sobchuk is a 10-minute film about a farewell morning — a boy is setting out on a long journey — but within these minutes the director manages to tell nearly everything about the main character, his family, his previous and even future life. And Maryna Vroda’s Rain is a story of an old married couple, who lost each other in the rain. It seems that there is nothing specific here — the students of our much suffering Karpenko-Kary Institute have shot a plenty of films of this kind — but Vroda has created a full-fledged love story. As for the programs beyond the competition the greatest events were the demonstration of the new film by a well-known duet of directors — brothers Dardenne Silence De Lorna (Belgium — Great Britain — France — Italy; the film won the Grand-Prix of the latest Cannes Festival) and launch of the program called “Cinematography against Totalitarianism.” The first film of this program was Letter to Anna directed by Eric Bergkraut, Swiss-Germany, which covers the story of life and assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaia. This film had been fully ignored by Russian press. Apparently, “Cinematography against Totalitarianism” might become the most controversial program of the whole festival.
Thus, the start of the Molodist Festival can be regarded as a successful one. Five days, full of events, are still awaiting us.
