42nd Molodist International Film Festival

The 42nd edition of the International film festival Molodist in the Ukrainian capital Kiev demonstrated further growth of this film buffs’ paradise. The festival was launched during the Soviet Union times as a relatively small competition venue for students’ films, mostly shorts. Feature length movies during the first years were screened only at the opening and closing ceremonies.

The festival management still keeps the short film (not only students’) format as its priority — the short film selections are the first entries in the Catalogue. But the growing audience is offered a large choice of feature length entries, grouped in various programs. Besides the three short films competitions (an international students’ competition, international short filmcompetition and an Ukrainian short film competition), there are also the main international competition, featuring 12 full length films from different countries, and the alternative competition Sunny Bunny of 7 films with an experimental bent.

The scope of Out of Competition programs was extremely broad, including several Ukrainian Premieres (the national cinema is slowly recovering after a long post-Soviet crisis); a tribute to the recently deceased great actor Bohdan Stupka (a retrospective of 11 films made in Ukraine, Russia and Poland); a selection of recent productions from Germany, France (including a sensational visit of Leos Carax with Holy Motors), Scadinavia and Russia, as well as Super Long Nights of short films from France, Germany and Switzerland.

The Synergy section, devoted to experimental films and video-art, comprised works by world famous Russian group Provmysa, as well as a selection of shorts from Clermont-Ferrand Film festival.

Nine masterpieces from the Festival of Festivals selection — films like Pieta, Post Tenabras Lux or the Israeli Footnote (Hearat Shulayim) — attracted the largest audiences.

As a whole the panorama of different types of world cinema, proposed by the selectors of Molodist  — the General Director Andriy Khalpakchi, the head of programming Denis Nikitenko and his colleagues — was almost too exhaustive for ten days, that included also several Special Events, two days pitching session (the Boat Meetings), master classes and Round Table discussions. (Kirill Razlogov)

Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival: www.molodist.com