Tyrannosaur crowned king at VOICES, St Petersburg's Kinoforum kicks off

Paddy Considine’s hard-hitting drama Tyrannosaur has continued its successful run at international film festivals by picking up the Grand Prix for Best Film at the second edition of VOICES (Vologda Independent Cinema from European Screens Festival) which wrapped on Saturday night in Vologda’s Lenkom cinema.

Presenting the award, jury president Hugh Hudson said that the choice of Tyrannosaur had been “absolutely unanimous from a wonderful jury” and, in conversation with ScreenDaily, praised the “high quality” of the films in this year’s competition.

The Grand Prix includes support for the campaign by the film’s Russian theatrical distributor P&I Films.

Meanwhile, Swedish filmmaker Lisa Langseth’s Pure received three trophies: the award for Best Director, Best Acting Performance for Alicia Vikander (ex aequo with Olivia Colman in Tyrannosaur) and the Audience Award.

In addition, French director Brigitte Sy was on hand in person to accept the award for Best Screenplay for Free Hands from the Georgian filmmaker Nana Djordjadze.

During the award ceremony it was confirmed that the country focus at next year’s festival will be Germany as part of the German-Russian Year.

The prizes had hardly been handed over before several of the festival’s guests including Pavel Lungin, producers Andrey Deryabin and Evgeny Gindilis, and distributor Raissa Fomina, were whisked off for a quick bite to eat before boarding the night train to St. Petersburg heading for the Saint Petersburg International Kinoforum (10-15 July) which kicked off on Sunday evening with Pedro Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In.

Kinoforum has two competition programmes – Best of the the Best and The New Territories. According to programme director Andrei Plakhov, the Best of the Best competition “will present the award-winning films of the major international film festivals”, while The New Territories “opens new topics, new styles, new names and new tendencies.”

An extensive programme outside of these two competitions will include retrospectives dedicated to the filmmakers Denis Cote, Marlen Khutsiyev, Alexander Rekhviashvili and Naomi Kawase as well as a general retrospective on Italian films held as part of the Year of Italy in Russia, and a showcase of new Russian films first shown at last month’s national Kinotavr film festival in Sochi.

In addition, internationally renowned filmmaker Alexander Sokurov – who is currently putting the finishing touches to his latest feature film Faust – will be overseeing a new initiative called Metropolis Campus for amateur filmmakers from all over Russia and CIS.

200 young non-professional filmmakers representing 50 cities and 11 countries – from Latvia to Uzbekistan – will participate in the Campus with 155 films selected from over 500 works.

A jury including Sokurov, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa and producer Igor Tolstunov will judge the winners in four categories – Grand Prix, Best Directing, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography - from 15 of the Campus participants’ films.

Running on lines similar in spirit to the Berlinale Talent Campus, the Metropolis Campus’ participants will have the chance to visit festival screenings and attend seminars on scriptwriting, directing and production as well meet Russian and international filmmakers.

As Sokurov pointed out, the Campus “is not only the festival and cinema school, but also  a working platform where the cinematography that is unknown to the audience will become a real cinematography, will get an opportunity to be evaluated professionally, which in its turn will encourage new names, new  ideas  and, as a consequence, the start of a new cinematographic movement.”