The VIII Eurasia International Film Festival was held in Almaty in 2012. This year there were a lot of good arthouse films, and for fine connoisseurs of cinema, the festival has become a real holiday. The creative youth of Kazakhstan, who tried not to miss the viewings, started talking about “Eurasia”. The Danish film “The Hunt” by Thomas Vinterberg, which previously won the Prize for Best Actor at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, participated in the competition program. As the director of the festival Gulnara Abikeeva stated, “we had to fight hard for the participation of this film, which greatly increases the level of the competition program.”
The Franco-Polish-German film “Revelation”, a participant of the Berlin Film Festival in 2012, and “City of Children”, the best Greek film of 2011, were also presented. There was also a screening of the Kazakh fantasy film “The Book of Legends. The Mysterious Forest”, which was marked as a special event.
The jury was chaired by Hollywood director Wolfgang Petersen. Interestingly, in 1997 he made the film “The President's Plane”. In it, Kazakh special forces as anti-heroes hijacked the plane of the American President to demand the release of the bloody dictator of Kazakhstan Ivan Radek. According to the film, Kazakhstan is a nuclear country, and its ruler intends to revive the USSR. It is unlikely that Petersen could then assume that in 15 years he would see the “nuclear power” firsthand.
Winners:
It was decided not to award the Grand Prix for the best film.
The prize for the best director's work was shared by Uchkun Alper (“The Future Lasts Forever”, Turkey) and Malgorzata Szumowska (“Revelations”, France – Poland – Germany).
Prize for the best female role – Anaïs Demoustier (“Revelations”).
Prize for the best male role – Azamat Nigmanov (“Convoy”, Russia).
Приз жюри ФИПРЕССИ – “Convoy” (Russia), dir. Andrey Mizgirev.
