Caixa Cultural Promotes Contemporary Russian Film Exhibit in Rio

By Beatriz Miranda, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Starting from next Tuesday, September 19th, Caixa Cultural, in Centro, will promote the festival “Rússia: um quarto de século através do cinema” (Russia: A Quarter of Century Through Cinema). Until October 1st, the exhibit brings sixteen films produced in the last 25 years that portray the post-soviet reality in Russia.

The festival will present a variety of works by renowned Russian filmmakers, including productions that have participated in Cannes‘ last edition.

Screening both fictions and documentaries, the event aims to promote the Russian audiovisual contemporary expression as it is still unknown by most of Brazil’s audience.

““The Russian cinema was definitely one of the most expressive in the world, and the country has contributed in a very singular way to the development of the seventh art in the twentieth century”, affirms Luiz Gustavo, one of the curators.

Among the selection’s highlights is the retrospective of Aleksey German’s work, considered one of the most important Russian directors of his generation. The audience will have the opportunity to check for the first time German’s “Khrustalev, the Car!” (1998) and “It Is Hard to Be a God” (2013).

The recently released “Tesnota” (Closeness, 2017), by Kantemir Balagov, is also one of the great promises of this exhibit. The film participated in the official selection of Cannes 2017, where is received the “FIPRESCI Prizena” award in the category “Uncertainregard”.

What’s more, three of the participant productions will be screened in a Brazilian movie theater for the very first time: “The Hope Factory” (2014), by Natalia Meshaninova; Nicola Belucci’s “Grozny’s Blues” (2015), which portrays life in contemporary Chechenya; and “Something Better to Come” (2014), by Hannah Polak, awarded for 23 times in international festivals.

Besides the film sessions, the festival will promote a series of debates on Russian filmmakers, Russia’s cinema aesthetics and discourse, led by curators Maria Vragova and Luiz Gustavo Carvalho and journalist Anton Dolin, chief-editor at “The Art of Cinema”, Russian’s main cinema magazine.

“This festival’s selection aims to reveal some of the greatest names of Russia’s contemporary cinema and a little from what Russia actually is in the present day”, explains Luiz Gustavo.

What: “Rússia: um quarto de século através do cinema” (Russia: A Quarter of Century Through Cinema)
When: September 19th to October 1st – see venue for time details
Where: Caixa Cultural do Rio de Janeiro – Avenida Almirante Barroso, 25 – Centro – Tel: (21) 3980-3815
Entrance: R$1 – R$2