The Pushkinsky cinema hall in the centre of Moscow is ready to host the red carpet ceremony of the 32nd International Moscow Film Festival which opens on Thursday night.
Among the festival's foreign guests who have already arrived in Moscow are the cult French filmmakers Luc Besson and Claude Leloush. The new film by Claude Leloush "A Woman and Men" is to open the festival and the new movie by Luc Besson "The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Dry-White" will close it. Besson is also to chair the jury of the festival.
One more French movie which is expected to arouse great interest is the Michel Cohen film "It Begins with the End" starring Emmanuelle Beart and the director himself. Earlier the organizers of the Cannes film festival rejected it as too outrageous but Russians found that having some outrageous elements won't spoil the festival.
Moreover this year the Russian organizers of the festival have added as an exotic dish, a film from such a closed country as North Korea.
The festival's main contest program includes 15 films from European and Asian countries, as well as North and South America. According to film critics, the theme which unites the modern cinematography today is "parting with the past". The action of the Polish film Rozochka (Little Rose) set in 1960 in the days of the communist regime. The German film "Berlin. Boxhagener Platz" is also about the 1960-s but shows the days of the sexual revolution. The Russian film "Sparrow" stands apart from these films. The film is set in our day. The message of the film is an appeal for compassion which is an everlasting theme. The film was made by Siberian documentarian Yuri Shiller (this is his first feature film). It is the story of a village boy who decided to protect the horses the grown-ups are planning to send to a slaughter house. Here is an extract from the interview Yuri Shiller gave to the "Voice of Russia":
"I make documentaries and I see a lot of things around me. I have accumulated a lot of material I would like to show again but I don't have the option of making it into the documentary genre anymore. This is how the script was written and a feature film was made. You know - farmers take out a loan and a year later they cannot pay it off. But they must. So they decide to take a herd of horses to the slaughter house. And the boy... he can feel others' pain. I wish we all were like him."
The second contest of the Moscow film festival is called Perspectiva (the perspective) and has always been more esthetic. It is targeted as the search for a new visual language and new themes in the modern cinematograph.
From June 17 till June 26 more than 200 films from the whole world will be shown at the Moscow film festival.
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