On Tuesday, the organizers of the 41st Moscow International Film Festival announced what films will be included in the main competition of the show. Russia will be represented on it by three ribbons: “Epidemic,” directed by Pavel Kostomarov, “The sun does not set over me” by Lyubov Borisova and “Sunday” by Svetlana Proskurina.

The Iranian film “My life in the second year”, “The Life of Sea Dwellers” (China), the film “The Improvisers” from Japan, the drama “The Sabbath Day” from Bangladesh, the Turkish film “Kapkan”, “The Void” (Finland ), "Training of personal growth" of Kazakhstan director Farhat Sharipov, "She laughs" (Italy), "Honeymoon in Zgezhe" from France and the Latvian tape "Father night".

As already announced earlier, the main competition jury will be headed by South Korean director Kim Ki Duk. This director is well known to the Russian public from the films “The Island” and “Pieta”, for which he received the “Golden Lion” of the Venice Film Festival. The jury will also include Russian actress Irina Apeksimova (“Birthday of Bourgeois”), Italian scriptwriter Valiya Santella (“My mother”) and Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu (“Honey”). Another cinematographer will join them, but the organizers haven’t yet specified who exactly.

What films will be shown at the opening and closing of the festival will also be announced later. Earlier in the media there was information that the closure of Pavel Lungin’s “Brotherhood” could become the closing film of the Moscow International Film Festival, but representatives of the festival did not comment on these messages, noting that this issue is still being resolved.

On the MIFF for the first time show series

In 2019, guests of the festival will enjoy a series of innovations. One of them - the emergence of a special program dedicated to the series. It was called the “First Series”, and within its framework several premiere shows will take place. In particular, viewers will be able to get acquainted with two Russian TV shows: “Identification” with Polina Kutepova in the lead role and “Trigger” with Maxim Matveyev. Also, the first two episodes of the fourth season of the Italian TV series “Gomorrah” and the Israeli serial film “Just for Today” will be shown.

The MIFF documentary film program received an Oscar-winning status. This means that now participating films will be automatically selected for the Academy Award.

Also, the organizers said that now the MIFF will always be held in April, and not in June, as it was before. For the first time, the leadership of the film forum had to be rescheduled for April in 2018 due to the fact that the capital hosted the matches of the World Cup. Then it was a forced measure, but the experience was considered successful. As the program director of the festival, Kirill Razlogov, noted, this will not affect the festival program at all, because its formation, as a rule, is already ending by April.

Retrospectives of European classics and the Avengers: Finals special show

Traditionally, in addition to the competition program, the festival offers viewers a wide choice of pictures of various genres and eras: these are masterpieces from recognized classics of cinema, experiments of modern cinematographers, and entertaining films.

The program "The twentieth century of Hungarian cinema" will acquaint viewers with restored copies of the best representatives of the national cinema of this country. The film will open the retrospective of the film “It's time for dreams” directed by Istvan Szabo. This is the first part of the trilogy, which also includes tapes "Father" and "Film about love." To present it to the audience a classic of the Hungarian cinema will come personally.

The rubric “Roads of Turkish Cinema” was prepared within the framework of the cross year of culture and tourism in Russia and Turkey. It will feature modern tapes of Turkish directors, among which are “Wild Pear” by Nuri Bilge Ceylan and “Grain” by Semih Kaplanoglu.

This year, the MIFF guests will have the opportunity to get acquainted with the best pictures of the French director Michel Deville. At the film forum will show 13 of his tapes, including the criminal drama "Dossier on the 51st." This director began his career in the era of the "new wave", but he did not acquire the same fame as his contemporaries Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Deville made films in a more traditional manner, preferring comedies.

Another new heading is “Odessa Cinematic”. It will show the famous pre-revolutionary and Soviet tapes created at the Odessa Film Studio - one of the oldest in the post-Soviet space. As Razlogov noted, the reason for the creation of this program was the departure from the lives of a number of prominent representatives of the national cinema who worked in Odessa. Among them are Stanislav Govorukhin, Marlene Hutsiev and Kira Muratova.

For the 100th anniversary of VGIK, the organizers prepared a retrospective in which the MIFF guests will be able to see the unknown works of the classics of the national camera school: Pavel Lebeshev (“A few days from the life of I. I. Oblomov”), Vadim Yusov (“I walk across Moscow”), George Rerberg (“The Mirror”) and Alexey Rodionov (“Go and see”).

A pleasant event awaits fans of comics. April 23, six days before the Russian premiere, at the Moscow International Film Festival will be a special show of the action movie "Avengers: Final" - the final part of the Hollywood franchise, based on the works of Marvel. To refresh the cinematic episodes of the movie series, viewers will also be able to watch the three previous series: “The Avengers” (2012), “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015) and “The Avengers: War of Infinity” (2018).

One of the oldest festivals

MIFF is one of the oldest film festivals in the world: the first review was held on February 21, 1935 in the Udarnik cinema. Then he, however, bore a different name - "Soviet Film Festival in Moscow." The competition was attended by paintings from 19 countries, and the jury was headed by Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. The main prize was then received by the studio “Lenfilm” for the paintings “Chapaev”, “The Youth of Maxim”, “Peasants”. Walt Disney’s animation projects and the last billionaire painting by Frenchman Rene Claire were also honored.

However, the festival of 1935 turned out to be a one-time event and did not continue. He resumed his work already in the era of thaw - in 1959. The then member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU Ekaterina Furtseva, who became the fourth Minister of Culture of the USSR a year later, insisted on this. The opening of the revived festival was held at the Palace of Sports. Lenin in Luzhniki. The main award then won the military drama Sergei Bondarchuk "The Fate of Man." Since then, a film forum has been held every two years.

During the existence of the festival, classics of world cinema received prizes on it: Federico Fellini, Istvan Szabo, Akira Kurosawa, Krzysztof Kieslevsky, Andrzej Wajda, George Danelia, Stanley Kramer, Grigori Chukhrai and many others. Stars such as Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Finch, Jean Marais, Yves Montand and Anna Magnani came to the MIFF as guests.

From 1999 to the present day MIFF is headed by film director Nikita Mikhalkov. With him, the festival was held annually.