The acceptance of applications for participation in the XVII Kazan International Muslim Film Festival (KMFMK) has been completed. During the campaign, the organizing committee registered about 600 applications from 45 countries of the world.

We remind  that the application campaign started on February 1 this year and ended on June 1. The selection committee, headed by Kazakh film expert and film critic Gulnara Abikeyeva, will finish its work by early July, after which the competition program will be announced.

The selection committee also included Doctor of Philosophy and Art History, film critic, author of articles and publications on the culture and cinema of Central Asia and Turkey, member of the jury and selection commissions of various international film festivals, Director General of Eurasia Global Connecting Svetlana Slapke (Germany) and historian , culturologist, director of the New Institute of Culturology, researcher at VGIK Nina Kochelyaeva (Russia). As noted by the members of the selection committee of the festival, this year, despite the situation related to the coronavirus pandemic, more applications were received than in 2020.

“The general impression is that, despite the period of the pandemic, despite the fact that the last festival was held in an online format, the film forum has not lost its attractiveness for filmmakers, because there are no less applications than last year and, in some cases, even more. This applies mainly to short films ”, – shared her impressions of watching Nina Kochelyaeva.

In her opinion, the declared works “preserve regional and cultural diversity.” “There will be further adjustments to the program, but the fact that there are many applications and are widely represented in different countries of the world suggests that the Kazan Muslim Film Festival is still a popular cinematic platform,” Nina Kochelyaeva emphasized. At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic still affected the work of filmmakers. Thus, KMFMC traditionally received many applications from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In the same year, Kazakhstan, for example, was represented at the festival with only three full-length films.

“There are also new trends in filming. During a pandemic, lockdown becomes a cinematic brand. Another interesting and new tendency is the appearance of films in the screenlife format, invented by Timur Bekmambetov, “N. Kochelyaeva said.

Film critic Svetlana Slapke said that the impression after watching the films announced for the Kazan Film Festival is good. “Due to the situation with the pandemic, we had serious fears that this could noticeably affect the total number of films made, and their quality could suffer. Of course, this was reflected in the general mass. But, nevertheless, there were again much more worthy films than we could include in the competition. Therefore, at the end of the work, the selection committee faces a pleasant and difficult agony of choosing from good and very good films, ”she said.

“The general tendency of the films selected for the competition this year can be traced quite clearly. The first is the interaction and mutual influence of different cultures, religions, life values, sometimes reaching the level of open confrontation. The second is constant movement. Internal movement of the soul and external, including the road and interesting road movies with a philosophical context, ”added Svetlana Slapke.

The films accepted by the selection committee will be included in the main competition poster of the 2021 festival. In addition to the traditional competitive program, an extensive non-competitive and parallel program awaits the audience. The out-of-competition program will present to the audience the best examples of Russian fiction, documentary and animated films, retrospective and thematic programs.

The Kazan International Muslim Film Festival has been held in the capital of Tatarstan since 2005. This year it will be held in Kazan from 5 to 10 September with the support of the President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, in partnership with the strategic vision group “Russia – Islamic World”.