Journeys of Discovery in the East: Russia, Guest of the 3rd Zurich Film Festival
The examination of other cultures, of foreign visual languages and narrative techniques, typifies the series New World View. This year, the Zurich Film Festival will introduce Russia as its guest country and impart a new image of a land that, since 1989, has been defined by its social and political upheavals. Through the works of these young directors, it is possible to deduce the questions and conflicts occupying today’s Russian society. The films differ greatly in their basic approach – both in the choice of narrative form and theme. No other movie-land in the world of late has experienced the same dynamic development in its domestic film industry as Russia has. After the crisis suffered by Russian film following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90s, production is now booming – at least 100 films a year are currently being realised. The box office has grown accordingly by 30 – 40% in the last five years. After France, Russia is Europe’s strongest production country with the largest cinema growth worldwide. Russian cinema offers first-class art house productions in addition to the mainstream blockbusters. It is chiefly the young generation of Russian filmmakers who have enthused world audiences with their cinematic masterpieces - countless international prizes pay tribute to the quality of these new works.
Open your eyes to a new image of this huge country at the Zurich Film Festival. We will introduce the most exciting Russian filmmaking talent together with their most current works and screen numerous prize-winning films for the first time in Switzerland. The Zurich Talk ‘Contemporary Russian Cinema’ will supplement the programme. The Zurich Film Festival has been able to secure two greats of the Russian film scene: Sitora Alieva, director of the Sochi Film Festival, the most important national film event, and Andrei Plachov, leading film critic and president of the film critics’ association FIPRESCI.
The New World View series will be curated by the Russian born Nikolaj Nikitin, founder, publisher and chief editor of the German film magazine Schnitt, member of numerous organisations and bodies relating to Eastern European film and contemporary Russian film scene expert.
Radical Changes in the Russian Film Industry
One particular highlight of this series is the film Simple Things (Proskye veshchi) from Aleksey Popogrebsky, which won over the juries at the two most important Eastern European film festivals: He won this year’s first prize at the Sochi Film Festival and walked away with further prizes at the 42nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, including the Best Actor award for Sergey Puskepalis. Also set to enthuse is Vera Storozheva’s Travelling With Pets (Puteshestviye s domashnimi zhivotymi), which won the first prize at the Moscow Film Festival.
The Zurich Film Festival is pleased to have secured Nikolaj Nikitin, a first-rate authority in the field of Eastern European film, as the designer of the series New World View.
In 1999, together with Oliver Baumgarten, Nikolaj Nikitin initiated the Schnitt Preis, awarded in Cologne since 2001 within the framework of the postproduction event Film+, of which he is also the artistic director.
Nikolaj Nikitin is a member of FIPRESCI and the European Film Academy. The main focus of his work is on Eastern European film: Since 2001, Nikolaj Nikitin has been a selection committee member of GoEast (Wiesbaden) and supervisor of the Export Union Study on the state of film in Eastern Europe.
In May 2002, he was appointed the Berlinale’s Eastern European delegate. Nikolaj Nikitin recently became the sole executive of the Palic European Film Festival’s competition programme in Serbia. He additionally works as a film journalist, translates film history texts and has a lectureship at the University of Bochum.
