MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. Winners of 46th Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) will be announced during a closing ceremony in Moscow on Friday.
This year, the festival featured over 240 films from 56 countries. Kicking off the festival was "Upon Open Sky" by Mexican directors Mariana and Santiago Arriraga.
The jury deciding on the top award, the Golden St. George, is chaired by Icelandic director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. Over the past week, they considered ten films from Rusisa, Germany, Serbia, Romania, Iran and other countries. Russia was represented by Ivan Sosnin's film "The Alien."
In a previous interview to TASS, MIFF program director Ivan Kudryavtsev said the event’s program will present more than 30 world premieres.
"This year we will show more than 30 world premieres. Just for comparison, last year there were 26 of them. Among them are 'The Forest King,' 'The Black Notes,' 'Nelyubimka,' 'The Alien.' These are all different genres and have different messages, so there is something for everyone," he said.
The MIFF program director said that more than a half of these films come from countries, whose governments are unfriendly towards Russia, and contestants are facing "enormous pressure" at home for participating in the Russian festival.
MIFF prizes
The main prize of the festival - the Golden Saint George is awarded for the "best film in the competition program" and for "contribution into the world cinema art." The laureates in seven nominations, including "Best Director," "Best Actor" and "Best Actress," are awarded with the Silver Saint George statuettes.
"I Belive," the honorary prize "for conquering the summits of the art of acting and faithful adherence to the principles of Stanislavsky’s School" has already been handed over to Russian actor and the artistic director of the State Theatre of Nations, Yevgeny Mironov.
About the festival
The Moscow Film Festival was founded in 1935, which makes it the world’s second oldest film festival after the Venice event. In 1995 it was announced that the film festival would become annual, although it was not held in 1996 and 1998. Since 1999, the MIFF has been held every year. The president of the film festival is director Nikita Mikhalkov. TASS is the information partner of the MIFF.