LONDON, Nov. 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Russian Film Festival will be held for the first time in the UK from November 12 to December 10, 2021 on BFI Player. Ten contemporary Russian films across various genres have been selected specifically for British audiences and will be available online.
The Russian Film Festival (RFF) was launched in 2020 and has already been successfully held in 16 countries, with more than 200,000 viewers. It is organised by ROSKINO, a state organisation representing the Russian audiovisual content industry internationally with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian Cinema Fund.
The films will be available to watch on BFI Player Subscription with English subtitles. New customers can enjoy the festival films as part of an extended Subscription free trial using the voucher code RFF21. In doing so, the BFI will further diversify the already broad collection of auteur and international cinema on the platform. Festival teaser here.
The selection includes:
- Masha (2020) - a crime drama telling the story of Masha whose world is shattered when she learns a criminal truth about her friends. Director: Anastasiya Palchikova.
- Conscience (2021) - a critically acclaimed, award-winning crime drama set in the 1920s during a political crisis in Russia. Director: Aleksey Kozlov.
- A Siege Diary (2020) - a war drama revolving around the 1942 Siege of Leningrad. Director: Aleksey Kozlov.
- Last 'Dear Bulgary' (2021) - a comedy-drama set in 1943 about a fruit grower who revives a medicinal variety of apples and investigates a strange crime. Director: Aleksey Fedorchenko.
- Tell Her (2020) - a partly autobiographical family drama. Director: Alexander Molochnikov.
- The Bolshoy (2017) - a ballet drama about an aspiring ballet dancer trying to carve her way to the stage of the famous Bolshoy Theatre. Director: Valery Todorovsky.
- Doctor Liza (2020) - a biographical drama with a star cast including Chulpan Khamatova and Konstantin Khabensky. Director: Oksana Karas.
- The Humorist (2019) - a dramedy about the creative and life crisis of a popular Soviet comedian played by Aleksey Agranovich. Director:Mikhail Idov.
- The Story of an Appointment (2018) - an historical drama based on real events involving Russian writer Count Leo Tolstoy. Director: Avdotya Smirnova.
- Stanislavski. Lust for life (2020) - a documentary portraying the life and talent of Konstantin Stanislavski. Director: Julia Bobkova.
Evgenia Markova, CEO of ROSKINO:
"We are eager to start the collaboration of the Russian Film Festival with BFI Player; we hope it will help us to increase the number of Russian cinema fans and strengthen cultural ties between our countries. We are excited about the perception of Russian movies in the United Kingdom - we are bringing a number of films in a variety of genres and it will be great to know which genres will be the most popular. The viewers of BFI Player are very interested in modern auteur movies and we considered this fact while making the selection of the films. Hopefully, the British audience will appreciate modern Russian movies no less than the documentaries about Russia that are already available on BFI Player. We also hope that the Russian Film Festival with the support of the recognized platform will let us understand the potential for cooperation between film industries of Russia and the UK."
Stuart Brown, BFI Head of Programme and Acquisitions says:
"The opportunity to bring a selection of contemporary Russian cinema to BFI Player subscribers was too good to miss and we welcome this exciting new partnership with ROSKINO. We have previously brought French, Polish and African films to the programme in a similar festival format, all of which had strong engagement with existing subscribers while also delivering new audiences. Our aim with BFI Player is to create the very best film subscription offer, with our library of contemporary, cult and classic films enhanced by new collections of work like the Russian Film Festival, that film fans in the UK may otherwise not be able to see."
