As this year’s Moscow International Film Festival readies for launch, Germany’s Media Luna New Films has picked up international distribution rights to a title in competition at the 35th edition.

The Cologne-based sales agent has secured teenage drama The Kids From The Port, the second feature from Spanish director Alberto Morais.

It will see Morais return to Moscow’s main competition, having won the Golden George and the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize at the Russian festival two years ago for his feature debut Las Olas, which also received the Silver George for actor Carlos Álvarez-Nóvia.

Media Luna has also secured the rights to Slovenian director Nejc Gazvoda’s Dual, which will have its world premiere in Karlovy Vary’s East of the West Competition on July 3.

The love story between two young women is Gazvoda’s second feature after his internationally acclaimed debut A Trip.

Media Luna will also have the international premiere of David Verbeek’s How To Describe A Cloud in Karlovy Vary’s Forum of Independents Competition.

Moscow

This Moscow International Film Festival will open on Thursday evening (June 20) with a gala screening of World War Z and star Brad Pitt in attendance at the Pushkinskiy Theatre.

RealD’s digital 3D projection will be employed to exhibit the opening film, directed by Marc Forster and produced by Pitt.

The main competition will kick off the next day with the world premiere of UK director Gareth Jones’ Delight, the second part of his D trilogy after Desire in 2009.

The international jury comrpises film-makers Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Ursula Meier and Busan International Film Festival’s honorary director Kim Dong-Ho.

They will choose from a line-up of 16 titles that includes Wojciech Smarzowski’s Traffic Department; Marcel Gisler’s Rosie; Momcilo Mrdakovic’s Mamarosh; Andrey Bogatyrov’s Judas; Germinal Alvarez’s Back In Crime; and Ciro de Caro’s Spaghetti Story.

The 2013 programme features sidebars dedicated to Costa-Gavras, Bernardo Bertolucci, Portuguese cinema and retrospectives of films about the Olympic Movement and the Battle of Stalingrad, among others.

Moscow’s programmers have also programmed sidebars in memory of the Russian director Alexey Balabanov, who died at the age of 54 last month, and of Galina Kopaneva, programmer for Karlovy Vary, who passed away last autumn.

5th Generation Campus

Moscow’s Generation Campus (June 19-25) will celebrate its fifth edition with film-makers such as Rafi Pitts, Boris Mitic, Claas Danielsen, Christian Berger and Yair Lev acting as expert tutors for 66 participants from 22 countries selected from  300 applications from 40 countries.

The festival will close on June 29 with a screening of Georgian-born writer-director Irakli Kvirikadze’s Rasputin, starring Gerard Depardieu in the title role.

Moscow Business Square

The fifth edition of the Moscow Business Square (MBS) (June 24-26) is expecting over 200 participants, including Rome Film Festival’s artistic director Marco Mueller, Greek-born film-maker Costa-Gavras, producers Cedomir Kolar, Guillaume de Seille, Karsten Stöter, Andrey Khvostov, Dariusz Jablonski as well as the Korean Film Council’s Minju Kim, CJ Entertainment’s Myung Kyoon Lim and Pei Huang of Beijing-based BIFTEC.

Apart from the Co-Production Forum’s public pitchings and the roundtables focusing on the Korean and Chinese markets, the MBS programme will also see presentations of the film industries in Poland, Italy, the CIS countries, the  Baltic states and Georgia.

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