Loznitsa's My Joy heads for competition in Sochi

Ukrainian-born director Sergei Loznitsa’s Cannes competition film My Joy has been selected as the only co-production for this year’s competition at the Kinotavr Open Russian Film Festival held at the Black Sea resort of Sochi from June 6 -13

The Competition jury led by filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov (whose Ward No. 6 was nominated for an Academy Award) and including Unifrance vice-director Joel Chapron will choose the winners from a 14-title lineup including Anna Fedorchenko’s Missing Man – which premiered at Berlin’s Panorama in February – and Svetlana Proskurina’s Novomoskovsk-set Truce, described as “a parable about Russian character” and featuring Ivan Dobronravov, one of the sons in the Venice winner The Return, in the lead role.

Moreover, artistic director Sitora Alieva has selected Alexei Fedorchenko’s new feature Ovsyanki, a requiem about love and death based on a short story by the young Kazan author Denis Osokin who also wrote the screenplay. Fedorchenko came to international attention in 2005 with his documentary fantasy First On The Moon.

Alieva adds that this year’s lineup was selected from 74 feature films and includes eight feature debuts by such filmmakers as Andrey Stempkovsky (Reverse Motion), Anna Matison (Satisfaction) and Yuri Bykov (Live).

Meanwhile, film director Alexey Popogrebsky – whose How I Ended This Summer won two prizes at last month’s goEast festival – will serve as president for the short films competition.

This year’s edition of Kinotavr will open with a gala screening of the portmanteau film Moscow, I Love You! with contributions by filmmakers across the generations from Russia and the CIS, including Nana Djordjadze, Murad Ibragimbekov, Vera Strozheva, Irakly Kvirikadze, Artem Mikhalkov and Ekaterina Dvigubskaya.

And the awards ceremony in Sochi’s Winter Theatre on June 13 will be followed by Red Colour Snow from Vladimir Motyl who died at the age of 82 in February. Motyl, who made the first Soviet “Western”, White Sand Of The Desert, in 1969, will posthumously be awarded a prize in memory of an invaluable contribution to Russian culture.

Other highlights at this year’s annual showcase of Russian production will include nightly open-air screenings of such films as Nikita Mikhalkov’s Cannes competition film Burnt By The Sun 2: Exodus, Felix Mikhailov’s Jolly Fellows, Oleg Asadulin’s The Phobos, Marius Vaisberg’s Love In The City 2, and Alexander Samokhvalov’s We Are from the Future 2, as well as a sidebar curated by film historian Sergei Lavrentiev, entitled The Joy of Co-Production, presenting past examples of Soviet-foreign co-productions ranging from Sergei Yutkevich’s 1953 USSR-Albanian co-production The Great Albanian Warrior Skanderbeg through George Cukor’s USSR-USA 1976 collaboration The Blue Bird to Grigori Chukhrai’s Life Is Beautiful, co-produced with Italy in 1980.

Moreover, Anna Gudkova, coordinator of Kinotavr’s pitching event, has won the services of the UK’s Nik Powell to prepare the producers for the public presentations of their projects.