Personnel decision: the comedy "Gelya" won the prize of the Window to Europe festival

One of the oldest film festivals in Russia, Window to Europe, awarded the winners. Izvestia watched the entire program and became convinced that the prizes here are not as important as the diagnosis that the review of Russian cinema makes. And in short, there is hope, but there are also problems. The main prize went to the lyrical drama about a youthful dream "Sidney Lumet's Birthday", among the winners is also the rolling hit "Gel", which will be on all screens of the country in a week. For more information, see the Izvestia review.

The most conceptual program in decades

Perhaps, the program of the Window to Europe festival has never been so integral and conceptual. At least for the last twenty years that the author of this text has been traveling to Vyborg. The concept corresponds to the festival's motto "Russian cinema — forecast for tomorrow". And after watching the entire contest, a paradoxical feeling remains.

We see that there are creative people who both want and will make films. And not what they are told, but a movie about themselves, their problems, fears, passions, thoughts. If there is no money, they will withdraw it for free. And they will shoot in such a way that the audience wants to watch it: they will look for suitable genre frames, invite superstars and media personalities even to supporting roles, and promote their films by any means. For example, the producer of one competition film simply plastered advertising flyers all over the doors of the festival hotel. Because a movie should be seen, and exactly when it is shot, and not lie on a shelf for decades.

The Cinema Foundation recently published a list of films that have received financial support from the state. There is not one of them about our time, and not because the foundation did not want to help, but because there were no such applications. Some fairy tales or something about the affairs of bygone days. The Window to Europe contest seems to be the answer to that list. It's all about now. Even the winner, "Sidney Lumet's Birthday" by Raul Heydarov, where everything takes place fifteen years ago, still seems completely relevant. If you want to find out how Russian directors see themselves and the world around them today, watch the Window to Europe contest. This is the best slice of self-reflection that we have today. Andrey Apostolov, the festival's program director, also masterfully ensured that even paintings shot by long-established authors, such as Slava Ross, would still be part of one big dialogue.

There were no obvious leaders in the Window to Europe competition, they are all more or less the same in artistic merit. By the end of the festival, which coincided with Honey Savior, a wonderful analogy arose: it was as if the authors of the films were apostles who, after the death of Christ, were left defenseless and helpless, and so they gathered together and each told about his personal pain and what he was trying to do with it. And we were nearby and heard everything.

Yes, it's all very personal, sometimes frankly biographical movies. In Sidney Lumet's Birthday, the hero is a young man who does not want to stay in a picturesque village in the Krasnodar Territory. He has a dream: he wants to become a director, and for this he needs to go to a big city. Away from his mom, who had returned from prison, and his criminal roommate. Only the beloved grandmother holds her grandson, does not want to let go. There is nothing new here, a hero who wants to get out of a swamp, which is not such a swamp, petty crime, the first feeling — we have seen all this many times. It was in last year's film "The Garden behind our House" by Anton Nefedov, about this "Tightness" and "Unclenching my Fists", and everything is also cinephile, also personal. And "Birthday" worked because it put the most effective end to the competition, where it was made the last show.

What are the competition films about?

But we'll watch other movies. In "Oncoming", a young director ends up in a completely Shukshinsky village, because he drank too much with a fellow traveler in a reserved seat (the wonderful role of Dmitry Kulichkov). Here is a writer of 30+ ("page 35") living through a creative crisis and finding a way out in working with an immigrant pickpocket, whose view is not so spoiled by civilization. And the 40+ choreographer at Delirium is also in a creative crisis, she is trying to solve it through rapprochement with the young members of the troupe. An architect with cancer replaces a dead dog with a girl who is willing to bark and jump for money if only the man would calm down. And in Zhemchug, the characters of Tsyganov and Khodchenkova "get" a girl from an orphanage instead of a dog, although they hardly really need her.

In all of Vyborg's films, we see personal drama, inability to cope with it, and an absolute dead end that leads to despair. Some of the characters in these paintings commit crimes, while others hide. On an island with a lighthouse, like a mother and child in the "Mainland," in a mansion that takes two hours by car to the nearest city, this is the movie "Someone Has to Die." In the house of the beloved, but for some reason always absent dad in the remake of "Scarecrow".

But the heroes of the criminal-adventurous comedy "Gel", on the contrary, rush to Vyborg in their lilac-pink gelandwagen to stir up local bandits there. Surprisingly, the film, which at first was only in the status of opening the festival and unexpectedly entered the competition program only the day before, turned out to be so much its own in this competition that it seemed to be there right away. Because there's a lot of personal stuff there, too, because the authors introduced a wife giving birth, an angry mother-in-law, an abandoned lover, and a lot of deceptively strong men whose power turns out to be a colossus on feet of clay every time. And now the genre film of the opening receives a special prize from the jury with the wording "for the energy on the screen." By the way, it's already in wide release in a week, don't miss it.

On the other hand, Gel is also an escape. In all the films of the competition, this inability to look at the world honestly and see it for what it is is a common thread. The directors emphasize this with magical elements (a killer whale guarding the island; a fox prowling around the house and seemingly revived from a Siberian fur coat), theatrical conventions, and musical numbers. It's difficult and scary for them, they live here and now, but they don't know how to say it "here and now." They are very accurate in describing the frustrations of the characters, but they do not yet know what to do with them next. But they want to talk about it, and they will, because they can't keep quiet. And there is hope in this.

If we talk about the main successes of the program, then they are in the documentary competition. There is nothing surprising in this, because one of these films, Burning Gorky, was directed by Alexei Fedorchenko, one of the main directors of modern Russian cinema, who is called a genius without discounts. In an absurdist manner, referring to Werner Herzog, Fedorchenko tells about the village of Krasnovydovo, lost in the Russian expanses, which had only two events in its entire history: Maxim Gorky came once, and Yuri Gagarin the second time. And the whole village has been telling each other legends about it for decades, because nothing else happens. True, the third visit has just happened, but it's better to find this movie and find out personally who was there this time and why. In the meantime, Krasnovydovo is literally stuck in the wheel of myths, and no one knows how to get out of this, and no one wants to know.

The second dock is "Focus" from Dmitry Davydov, the flagship of Yakut cinema. While abstract film-makers are shooting abstract films in a game competition, Davydov's hero in snow-covered Yakutia takes loans from a bank, negotiates with a local theater, gathers extras in a village club and makes a film for pennies that will go to dozens of festivals. There is no cart, so he puts the camera on a slide. If there are no actors, he will call the saleswoman from the grocery store. And there is so much life, so much humor and so much truth in this that I can't wait until the end of the credits: I want to grab the camera and shoot myself. It remains to understand what exactly. Find the full list of winners on the festival's website.