29th Moscow International Film Festival

Once, the festival of Moscow has been (together with Karlovy Vary) an attractive and important showcase of Eastern European films and Third World cinemas. In the last years, however, the event faced a lot of financial, organizational and conceptual problems. This year, a new beginning has been tried, with a new management. Filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov is still the event’s president. The general director is Natalya Syomina and the programming director became Kirsi Tykkylainen, head of the Finnish Film Foundation’s international department. Andrei Plakhov, the current president of FIPRESCI, heads the selection committee. — The festival has always shown an interest in programming the best of Russian cinema. And it is a Russian film that our jury prized this year, Nothing Personal (Nichego Lichnogo) by Larisa Sadilova.