Press releases

15 Oct 2019

Listapad 2019 to run national competition on 5-7 November

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MINSK, 15 October (BelTA) - Screenings of the national competition of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad 2019 will be held in the cinemas of the Belarus capital on 5-7 November, the competition coordinator Nikolai Lavrenyuk said at a press conference, BelTA has learned.

“This year's national film competition will be held for the sixth time. We have received 83 applications. The criteria for evaluating films were very high, in line with the international trends and international festival requirements, which allowed choosing the best of the best,” Nikolai Lavrenyuk noted.

The program of the national competition includes five feature movies, nine documentaries and six animated films. Four movies will be screened out-of-competition.

According to Nikolai Lavrenyuk, few animated films have been submitted but they are worth their weight in gold. “All authors are very talented. They create true miracles on the screen,” he said. All six animated films were filmed at the Belarusfilm studio. These are fairytale for children's audiences and stories intended for adults which touch on the themes of Belarusian and international culture.

The animation will be presented by works such as the Beauty and the Beast and directed by Natalia Darvina, Dante. Beatrice by Irina Kodyukova, the Tale about Gusli by Tatiana Kublitskaya, Thistle by Yevgenia Nadtochei, Magister of Free Arts by Yelena Petkevich and The Best Place in the World. The animated films will be screened in the Pioner movie house.

“The national competition includes five feature movies which merit special attention,” the coordinator of the competition stressed. The film Beach/Forest/Tambur directed by Kirill Galitsky and Svetlana Kozlovskaya is about relationships and fear. The Last Day of Summer by Yulia Shatun and Nikita Aleksandrova centers on a high-school student experiencing the last day of summer. The film 1986 has been submitted to the national competition by German director Lothar Herzog because it was shot in Belarus and features a large number of Belarusian filmmakers. The film shows modern Belarus and reflects the pain of the Chernobyl tragedy. The program will also feature Sasha’s Hell by Nikita Lavretsky and The Lake of Joy by Aleksei Poluyan.

The panel of judges the national competition will include Belarusian documentary filmmaker Olga Dashuk, programmer for the Gothenburg Film Festival in Sweden Freddy Olsson and will be led Polish director Krzysztof Zanussi.

The out-of-competition program includes four documentaries from well-known directors: Nothing by Yulia Dublevskaya, On The Threshold of Silence by Kirill Yerokhin about domestic violence, Ryby Dnei Moikh (Fish of My Past) by Dmitry Rachkovsky and Andrei Kryvetsky about the Belarusian family and the erosion of bonds between generations and Mousetrap by Darya Yurkevich.

The 26th edition of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad will be held on 1-8 November 2019 under the slogan “To Joy”. The founders of the festival are the Culture Ministry of the Republic of Belarus and the Minsk City Hall. The organizer is Visual and Performing Arts Center Art Corporation.