Moscow Business Square to spotlight Finland, Austria

Producers, distributors and film funders from both countries will be travelling to Moscow to meet their opposite numbers from the Russian film community.

As in previous years, the industry programme of the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) will include public pitchings of feature film and documentary projects looking for potential co-production partners in the Co-Production Forum.

Past editions of MBS featured such projects as Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato, Pavel Lungin’s Queen Of Spades, Maria Saakyan’s I’m Going To Change My Name and Bakur Bakuradze’sThe Hunter, Tatiana Korol’s Passing Clouds, and Marat Alykulov’s Lenin?!

In addition, the two-day event will include masterclasses and roundtables on alternative financing and distribution strategies for independent films.

Moscow’s main competition

Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud will head the international jury at the 37th edition of the Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) (June 19-26).

The main competition’s line-up will includes the world premiere of a project pitched at the MBS, Alexander Mindadze’s Dear Hans, Lovely Peter, which was structured as a co-production between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and the UK, as well as two other new Russian films, Andrey Proshkin’s Orlean and Irina Evteeva’s Arventur

In addition, MIFF’s selectors have invited such films as Japanese filmmaker Oh Mipo’s Being Good, US director Nick Sandow’s The Fan, Frenchman Jerome Bonnell’s All About Them, Coe Berriatua’s Heroes Of Evil from Spain, Bulgarian Ivaulo Hristov’s Loosers, and veteran Finnish director Jörn Donner’s Armi Alive!.

Due to the current problems in the Russian economy, MIFF’s organisers had to cut the number of films being shown and the festival’s length by two days. Nevertheless, the festival programme will also feature, inter alia, sidebars dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Bulgarian cinema, films about the Armenian genocide, a celebration of Fassbinder as well as showcases of Kurdish cinema and a review of contemporary and past Turkish cinema.

RUSSIAN BRIEFS

Mueller to head VOICES jury

The Beijing International Film Festival’s chief adviser Marco Mueller will serve as the jury president at the 6th edition of the VOICES festival for young European cinema in Vologda (July 3-7).

Last year had seen Mueller attending the Moscow Business Square where he spoke about his work as a festival director in Rome.

Home found for Museum of Cinema

The Russian Federation’s Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky has at last announced plans to locate the currently homeless Museum of Cinema in new premises in Pavilion No. 36 at the All-Russian Exhibition Centre (VDNKh) in the Russian capital.

The new home with an area of over 5,000 square metres would be able to house three cinemas, exhibition spaces for the Museum’s collection and temporary exhibitions, meeting areas, a cafe and a retail outlet from 2016.

The fate of the Museum of Cinema had been the subject of a documentary film collage by the German-born filmmaker Tatjana Brandrup, Cinema: A Public Affair, about the world of the Museum’s former director Naum Kleiman.

Brandrup’s film had its world premiere at the Berlinale’s Forum last February and won the Best Documentary award at the 25th Filmkunstfest in Schwerin at the beginning of May.

Strategic partnership between Central Partnership and Planeta Inform

Central Partnership has forged a strategic partnership with sales agent Planeta Inform for the international distribution of four productions currently in production:

• historical drama Viking, produced by Direktsiya Kino;
• thriller The Crew, produced by Trite;
• futuristic drama Mafia, produced by Enjoy Movies;
• epic historical action film Kolovrat, produced by Central Partnership.

According to the organisers of the Russian Cinema-Roskino stand in Cannes, this quartet generated interest from buyers as far afield as the USA, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.