PHOTOS BY: Gennadiy Avramenko
June 22, The Moscow International Film Festival welcomed media, Russian and foreign filmmakers, actors and talent to celebrate its 39th anniversary.
“The Moscow International Film Festival is one of the oldest in the world. For the first time, it was held in 1935 with Sergei Eisenstein as chairman of the Jury. Nevertheless, the Festival history is usually traced back to 1959, when it became a regular event. It is noteworthy that the Festival was reborn in the 1960s during the so called “period of thaw”, when film industry experienced an influx of filmmakers of a new generation whose spiritual experience was shaped by the great victory over fascism. In 1959 the opening ceremony of the first “thaw” Festival was held in the grand Palace of Sports in Luzhniki, Moscow”.
“Over the past 20 years the Festival Jury was headed by the leading world film personalities Richard Gere, Theo Angelopoulos, Margarethe von Trotta, Alan Parker, Gleb Panfilov, Fred Schepisi, Luc Besson, Geraldine Chaplin, Héctor Babenco, Pavel Lungin, Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
The program director of the MIFF is Kirill Razlogov, a culturologist, the selection committee is headed by a Russian film critic Andrei Plakhov.
For many years the President of the MIFF has been the Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov” (http://39.moscowfilmfestival.ru).
This year the main competition Jury includes director and producer Reza Mirkarimi, famous Italian actress Ornella Muti, Finnish writer, director and producer Jörn Donner, Spanish director/screenwriter Albert Serra, Russian actor/director Alexander Adabashyan, and German expert of film/advisor Brigitta Manthey.
The red carpet attendees included actress Ornella Muti, Nikita Mikhalkov’s wife and Russian public figure Tatiana Mikhalkova, the editor of Hello! Magazine Svetlana Bondarchuk, actress Svetlana Khodchenkova, model Polina Popova, and many others.
