French Audience Will Learn More about Russia's Culture

Residents and guests of the French city of Bordeaux will get acquainted with Russia’s culture and geography through its cinema. A festival "Russian cinema evenings in Bordeaux” will be held there from November 30 to December 4.

The festival is held annually under the patronage of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in France. This year Bordeaux will meet the festival participants for the eighth time. Its organizers are sure that cinema is the best way to show Russian culture, its originality and color. The audience will learn more about Russia’s history and science, its historical heritage and great travelers’ fate.

The festival brings to the views 23 films of different genres. Each film is a story showing the Russian soul. The festival visitors will see a dramatic picture of Avdotya Smirnova "The Story of a Single Destination" with the "participation" of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy; a documentary tape "24 snow" about life in the Far North; the classic family saga "Moscow does not believe in tears"; the film "Dovlatov" and other pictures.

A documentary "Siberian expedition” will be shown outside the competition. It was shot with a grant from the Russian Geographical Society. The picture tells about the 1894-1896 Yakut campaign of goldsmith Innokenty Sibiryakov. He wanted to find out how people live in the area of ​​gold mines, and at the same time explore the rich possibilities of this region and its unexplored resources.

The program of the VIII festival will include not only film screenings, but also meetings with famous artists and filmmakers, concerts, musical and artistic evenings.

One of the festival highlights is a contest-meeting of young Russian and French filmmakers with the professional jury "The World through the Eyes of the Young." Ten films will compete: five from Russia and five from France. Among them, for example, there is Alexandra Lupashko’s melodrama “A Girl and a Tree of Desires” about a five-year-old girl, Zhenya, who goes on an incredible journey to get her parents' attention. An animated film by Ekaterina Kireyeva "Bricks" will tell viewers how not to lose yourself in the modern impersonal world and others.  

Winners – one Russian film and one French film - will be selected by a competent jury. The Russian Geographical Society is represented by head of the film portal Darina Rudakova. The directors of the film-winners will work together on a short film. It will be shown at festivals in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Bordeaux in 2019-2020.

Note that an exhibition of works by the Most Beautiful Country photo contest participants is held at the festival. It includes 20 photographs depicting Russia in its national and natural diversity. The exhibition of the Russian Geographical Society will run until December 14.