The Kinotavr Open Film Festival is considered one of the main film events in Russia. Every year, at the very beginning of summer, Sochi hosts the best figures of Russian cinema for eight days. In 2012, Kinotavr was held for the 23rd time.
The main screening of Russia, the Kinotavr Open Film Festival, had a predecessor - the Festival of Unbought Cinema, which was held in 1990 in Podolsk with the participation of the independent company Podmoskovye. The festival was created to help Russian cinema, whose funding has significantly decreased during the transitional period of perestroika. But already in 1991 it was decided to hold a new festival in the resort town of Sochi.
Producer Mark Rudinstein headed the Kinotavr national film festival, and the famous actor Oleg Yankovsky was president for 11 years (from 1993 to 2004). In 2005, they were replaced by the president of CTC Media, Alexander Rodnyansky, and the general director of the Profit company, Igor Tolstunov.
With the arrival of the new leadership, the format of the festival has changed. To increase the budget, the business part of the film screening was significantly expanded and the international program was eliminated, with an emphasis on domestic cinema.
In 2012, 14 full-length feature films and one documentary took part in the Kinotavr competition program, as well as a screening of short films within the framework of the festival.
Traditionally, the pictures of the main competition were evaluated by an expert jury consisting of seven people. Usually the judges included representatives of different film professions. In 2012, only filmmakers were invited to the jury as an experiment. Vladimir Khotinenko was the head of the judiciary.
The short film competition was judged by a jury of three people.
The 23rd Sochi Film Festival has opened with the screening of the experimental film "Until the Night Separates" by Boris Khlebnikov. This is the first film in the history of Russian cinema, filmed on the basis of crowdsourcing, when non-professional actors took part in the filming for a very symbolic payment, or even completely free. The script of the film was based on the project of the Bolshoi Gorod magazine, during which the journalists listened and recorded the conversations of the visitors of the Pushkin restaurant for two weeks. These dialogues became the basis of the script.
The Kinotavra 2012 competition featured films by Avdotya Smirnova “Kokoko”, Vasily Sigarev “To Live”, Alexei Mizgirev “Convoy”, “I Don't Love You” by Alexander Rastorguev and Pavel Kostomarov, “Atonement” by Alexander Proshkin and others.
Two competitive films have already taken part in major international film festivals. A. Mizgirev's "Convoy" was in the "Panorama" program of the IFF in Berlin, and V. Sigarev's "Live" became a participant in the Rotterdam Festival.
The best film was recognized by the competent jury of Pavel Ruminov's film “I will be there” about a terminally ill woman who, hiding it, is looking for a foster family for her six-year-old son.
Among the short films, the absurdist film Legs - Atavism by Mikhail Mestetsky won. The work of Taisiya Igumentseva “Road to …” at the “Kinotavr”, awarded with the main prize in the youth program “Cinefondation” in Cannes, was left without prizes.
