Lots of great movies and moviemakers expected at Molodist fest
Ukraine’s biggest film festival, Molodist (Youth), is growing into a more and more serious event each year, and though it still has a long way to go to reach the level of the neighboring Moscow Film Festival, it already has something to boast. According to organizers, the fest received much more substantial financial support from the state this year, which should become obvious once the festival opens Oct. 20.
The biggest news so far is that a number of film stars are set to visit the festival, and while director Roman Polanski, French diva Fanny Ardant and European cinema veteran Gerard Depardieu have already visited Ukraine before – Depardieu has become a frequent guest in fact, and claims to be good friends with the president of Ukraine – the news that Uma Thurman plans to visit sounds impressive. Naturally, nothing is certain yet, but it is said the Tarantino’s muse should arrive in the company of Vadim Perelman, the Kyiv-born director of the Oscar-nominated “House of Sand and Fog.” His latest work, “In Bloom,” starred the magnificent Uma, so it’s hardly surprising they are coming together.
Previously limited to just a couple of movie theaters, this year Molodist will expand to at least five, including Kyiv as the central location of the festival, as well as Kinopanorama, Butterfly-Ultramarine, Zhovten and Komod. The contest program of the festival will be comprised of three categories: student films, first professional shorts and first professional full-length films. The full-length films program will count 12 movies, and the shorts and student films program will be represented by 25 works. Apart from the actual contest, the festival will also feature several retrospectives of film classics and meetings with outstanding moviemakers.
This year’s Molodist will be opened by the film of cult Dutch director Jos Stelling “Duska,” which has already been nominated for Oscar as Best Foreign Film. The movie, created by Dutch moviemakers together with Ukrainians and Russians, was partly shot in Kyiv and stars Russian actor Sergey Makovetskiy.
