Noticias

Russian Film Week USA, which runs Jan. 23-29, is expanding its reach as it pivots to an online format, allowing audiences across the U.S. to sample Russia’s latest cinematic output. The event opens with Alexey Uchitel’s surreal road trip movie “Tsoy,” which imagines the aftermath of the fateful 1990 car accident that killed Soviet rock idol Victor Tsoy.

The first batch of 10 titles to be announced by the event, formerly called Russian Film Week New York, are all international or North American premieres, with the rest of the program, including documentaries and children’s films, to be announced later this month.

“The Whaler Boy,” which won Venice Days’ award for best director, is the closing night film. It follows an indigenous teenager as he discovers a world far beyond his whaling community. Other films in the lineup include Ivan Tverdovskiy’s “The Conference,” which also played at Venice Days,...

Directors Chanya Button, Adrian Sitaru, Xavier Seron scoop prizes; festival reveals works in progress winners.

UK filmmaker Chanya Button’s debut feature as director and producer, Burn Burn Burn, was voted by the audience at the Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff) as the winner of this year’s Grand Prix.

Producer Daniel-Konrad Cooper accepted the Golden Duke statuette on behalf of the production team from Oiff’s festival president Victoria Tigipko during the gala closing ceremony in the Black Sea city’s historic National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Button’s melancholic comedy had premiered at last year’s London Film Festival and is being handled internationally by Urban Distribution International.

International Competition

Meanwhile, the International Competition jury - headed by the UK writer Christopher Hampton and also including Oiff 2015 winner Eva Neymann, Us writer-director-actor Alex Ross Perry, producer Rebecca O’Brien and producer-director Uberto Pasolini - gave the Golden Duke statuette for Best Film to...

★★★★☆ Mikhail Segal's Short Stories (Rasskazy, 2012) is an exhilarating cinematic ride that imbues social commentary with a rich understanding of the need for entertainment. When a young writer's manuscript is rejected at a stylish publishing house, it somehow finds its way into the hands of various employees, with each of their lives curiously influenced by the prose it contains. We witness a meeting between a young couple and their wedding planner that rapidly descends into a life-coaching course, whilst an erotic encounter occurs between a young women and an older man who have far more than their noticeable age-gap separating them.

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