The Festival pays homage to Russian and Soviet cinema through the screening of several of its masterpieces, presented by a delegation of artists led by filmmaker Karen Chakhnazarov, director of the legendary Mosfilm studio.
This is not the first time that Russian cinema has been invited to the Marrakech International Film Festival, far from it. Thus, the Golden Star has already been awarded twice to Russian films, Wild Field by Mikhaïl Kalatozichvili in 2008 and Corrections class Classe à part by Ivan Tverdovsky in 2014.
The latter is also present at the festival this year, since his latest film, Zoology, is part of the official competition. Likewise, Alexei Mizguirev, who received the jury prize for Heart of Stone in 2007, presents this Wednesday evening his film The Duellist, selected Out of Competition. It must be said that, since the Palme d’Or awarded to Mikhail Kalatozov’s When the Storks Fly by at Cannes in 1958, Russian cinema has been the delight of film buffs at international festivals, winning numerous awards.
The tribute paid to him during this 16th edition of the Festival is an opportunity to (re)discover the films that have marked its long history. If the first films shown in Russia, at the end of the 19th century, were French (imported or filmed by the Lumière operators, then Gaumont and Pathé), the first Russian films were made in 1907. And after the First World War, what became the Soviet Union saw the development of a pioneering cinema, notably with the production of a masterpiece which marked its era: Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.
A few years earlier, in 1919, the world’s first film school (VGIK) opened its doors in Moscow. There studied directors whose names have remained in the memories, such as, among others, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alexander Sokurov, or Vladimir Menchov who received the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1981 and who is part of the Russian delegation present at the Festival.
