24th Moscow International Film Festival 2002

Moscow’s strength is its broad range of entries programmed in separate sections by curators who know their film history and have toured the major festivals. Besides the Main Program, the responsibility of Kirill Razlogov, the Panorama featured Special Screenings, Previews, Debut Filmmakers, Trends in World Cinema, Contemporary Russian Cinema, National Hits, Norwegian Cinema Today, Exotica (fringe cultures), Afghan Knot (films on Afghanistan), and Retrospective Tributes ­ to Bob Rafelson, Stanley Kubrick, Roger Vadim, Grigory Chukhrai, and Unknown (Boris) Barnet. Provided you knew your way through the metro labyrinth, a veritable feast of world cinema was at your beck and call at scattered venues around the city. But you didn’t have to go far to catch the Unknown Barnet shows: some screenings took place in the newly installed Film Club under the roof of the Manezh, the city’s exhibition hall housing the festival headquarters.

        Resurrezione (Italy/France/Germany), a cumbersome two-part TV adaptation by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, was awarded the St. George Statuette by an international jury headed by writer-diplomat Chingiz Aitmatov. The new version with an international cast didn’t fare much better than the original Mikhail Shvejcer version filmed 40 years ago in 1961 as a two-part spectacle with socialist-realist leanings. Timothy Peach plays Prince Neckliudov in love with Katya Maslova (Stefania Rocca), a prostitute accused of theft and murder, who had previously worked as a servant girl at his aunt’s villa and had been compromised by the young nobleman.

        For the second year in a row, the Special Jury Prize was awarded to an Iranian entry. Vahid Mousaian’s Are zou-ha-ye zamin (Wishes of the Land), a debut feature film by a documentary filmmaker, is the tragic story of a young girl in a rural community who defies tradition by rejecting the family’s chosen husband to decide for herself whom she wants to marry, in this case a sensitive young shepherd. Along similar lines, Monika Krzywkowska, awarded Best Actress, plays a young woman who wins the affection of a young man wrestling with a dubious vocation to the priesthood in Krzysztof Zanussi’s Suplement (Supplement) (Poland), the title referring to Zanussi’s retelling of the same story in his Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000), this time from the perspective of the woman. Supplement also shared the FIPRESCI (International Critics) Prize.

        Alexander Rogozhkin’s Kukushka (Cuckoo) (Russia) well deserved its multiple citations ­ Best Director Award, the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Audience Award. Set in September of 1944 in the idyllic Lapp country of northern Finland, the tale features three individuals ­ a Russian and a Finn (Willie Haapsalo, Best Actor Award), both soldiers, and a Lapp woman, who lost her husband in the war ­ in an hilarious tragicomedy of mutual misunderstandings in the days just before Finland and the Soviet Union signed a peace agreement. Witty dialogue, humorous twists, and a real discovery in Anni-Kristina Usso, a nonprofessional Lapp, assure that Cuckoo will find an audience worldwide.

        Another festival highlight was the world premiere of Bob Rafelson’s The House on Turk Street (USA/Canada/Germany), a bizarre film noir adaptation of a short story by Dashiell Hammett with Samuel L. Jackson as a detective with diabetes and Milla Jovovich as a Russian gunmoll-pianist with a yen for classical music.

        And Arvo Iho’s Karu Suda (Heart of the Bear) (Estonia/Russia/Germany/Czech Republic) confirms once again how the wilds of Siberia can inspire an accomplished cinematographer (Estonia’s Rein Kotov). »Making this film fulfilled a dream, but I’ve never made anything so difficult before,« said Arvo Iho, best known for his other outdoor film, The Birdwatcher (1986), made during the Gorbachev perestroika era. »After endless negotiations I was finally granted permission to shoot in the northern Urals. This is one of the last truly untouched places in Europe.« At the reception in the Estonian Embassy following the screening, Iho also thanked Berlin producer Manfred Durniok ­ »without whose support Heart of the Bear would never have been completed.«

Ronald Holloway