The Message to Man International Film Festival will open in St. Petersburg on October 18, less than a month away. Alongside the films in competition, the event will feature 13 special programmes, the highest number in the Festival’s history. In addition to the classic, well-known sections, this year’s festival will introduce numerous programmes from new curators, including, for the first time in five years, international curators from Italy and South Korea. The special programmes will showcase more than 130 documentaries, live-action, and animated films from over 40 countries. The Festival is held with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, and the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg.
PANORAMA.DOC
The most impactful full-length documentaries released worldwide over the past two years
TWIN PEAKS
Highlights from prestigious international film festivals over the past two years.
NEW VOICES
Young filmmakers exploring new forms
THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED
Films that reflect on post-traumatic experience
CYBEREYE
A programme dedicated to cinema and artificial intelligence
FUTURUM
Russian experimental films that break away from the norms of classical documentary cinema
TANGEDY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARGENTINE CINEMA
A large retrospective of Argentine cinema spanning half a century
COUNTRY PATH CONVERSATIONS
A programme from St. Petersburg’s young cinephile publication Samizdat K!
SOUTH KOREA’S YOUNG CINEMA
The most noteworthy debut works by young Korean filmmakers
SAKHA CINEMA: HERE AND NOW
Life in the Sakha Republic through the eyes of the new generation of Yakut filmmakers
SOYUZMULTFILM: THE BEST OF 10 YEARS
A panoramic view of a decade’s worth of films from the studio
MULTIVERSE
An out-of-competition short film programme featuring the best entries that didn’t make it into the main competition
RUSSIAN YOUNG. CONTINUED
Films by promising young Russian filmmakers
Please find programme descriptions and lists of films below. More information about the programmes is available on the Festival website: https://message2man.com.
PANORAMA.DOC
Curator: Natalia Pylaeva
“The programme features seven standout documentary films of the season, including participants from Cannes, Berlinale, Sundance, and others. Among them are Wim Wenders’ latest film Anselm, about the work of German artist and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, and this year’s Venice Film Festival hit Mistress Dispeller by Elizabeth Lo,” says programme curator Natalia Pylaeva.
Films:
- Agent of Happiness, 2024, Arun Bhattarai & Dorottya Zurbó (Bhutan, Hungary)
- Anselm, 2023, Wim Wenders (Germany, France)
- Mistress Dispeller, 2024, Elizabeth Lo (USA)
- Citizen Sleuth, 2023, Chris Kasick (USA)
- Nocturnes, 2024 Anirban Dutta & Anupama Srinivasan (India, USA)
- Pirópolis, 2024, Nicolás Molina (Chile)
- Seven Winters in Tehran, 2023, Steffi Niederzoll (Germany, France)
TWIN PEAKS
The name of Message to Man Film Festival’s new programme is inspired by David Lynch’s cult classic, which introduced a surrealist concept of a shifted reality that was groundbreaking for the late 20th century. The show anticipated much of modern life and remains relevant to this day.
The three films featured in the programme reflect cinema’s dual nature. On the one hand, it is becoming increasingly realistic: this near-documentary authenticity is felt in MMXX by Romania’s Cristi Puiu. On the other hand, there is the absurdist world in Universal Language by Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin and the hypnotically shifted Shambhala by Nepalese director Min Bahadur Bham.
Films:
- MMXX, 2023, Cristi Puiu (Romania, Moldova, France)
- Universal Language, 2024, Matthew Rankin (Canada)
- Shambhala, 2024, Min Bahadur Bham (Nepal, France, Norway, Hong Kong, Türkiye, Taiwan, USA, Qatar)
- SNOWFLAKES IN MY YARD, 2024, Bakur Bakuradze (Russia-Georgia)
NEW VOICES
Curator: Mikhail Ratgauz
“Beneath the outward diversity and bustle surrounding cinema lies a profound aesthetic calm, an unshakable monolith of discoveries from the 20th century that appears as the complete and exclusive range of what is possible. As always, the search for New Voices involved a challenging quest for films that refuse to stand in reverent awe before any form of consensus,” says Mikhail Ratgauz, the programme curator.
Among the films in the programme are The Other Way Around by Spanish filmmaker Jonás Trueba, which won the Europa Cinemas award at the Cannes Film Festival; the winner of the Outstanding Artistic Achievement prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival, The Wasteman by Ahmad Bahrami; and the new film An Evening Song (for three voices) by the star of American independent cinema Graham Swon.
Films:
- April, Green, Yellow, 2023, Santiago Aulicino (Argentina)
- An Evening Song (for three voices), 2023, Graham Swon (USA)
- There Is a Stone, 2022, Tatsunari Ôta (Japan)
- Camping du Lac, 2023, Éléonore Saintagnan (France)
- The Sea and Its Waves, 2023, Liana Kassir & Renaud Pachot (France, Lebanon)
- The Wasteman, 2024, Ahmad Bahrami (Iran)
- The Other Way Around, 2024, Jonás Trueba (France, Spain)
THIS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED
Curators: Egor Sennikov, Nikita Smirnov
A selection of films reflecting on trauma depicted in cinema. Among them is Four Daughters by Kaouther Ben Hania, a Cannes award winner and Oscar nominee, which reconstructs the traumatic events in the life of a Tunisian family.
“The Adivasi people call traumatic events ’what shouldn’t have happened.’ The unspeakable experience is often referred to as ’that.’ ’That’ disrupts the coherence of people’s history. The programme explores how trauma is difficult to represent, whether it’s about violence (My Worst Enemy), life inside a cult (Winter Howl), or the disintegration of a family (Four Daughters),” say programme curators Yegor Sennikov and Nikita Smirnov.
Films:
- The Eternal Memory, 2023, Maite Alberdi (Spain)
- Four Daughters, 2023, Kaouther Ben Hania (France, Tunisia, Germany, Saudi Arabia)
- Winter Howl, 2023, Matías Rojas Valencia (Chile, Colombia, Argentina)
- My Worst Enemy, 2023, Mehran Tamadon (France)
- I Don’t Know Where You Will Be Tomorrow, 2023, Emmanuel Roy (France)
CYBEREYE
Curators: Mikhail Zheleznikov, Katerina Parkhomenko
“The term ’artificial intelligence’ was coined 68 years ago, but despite the rapid rise of neural networks today, it is safe to say we still do not fully understand what AI truly is. Since our Festival is primarily about cinema, we decided to explore the possibilities of AI as a ’computational part’ within our ability to solve artistic tasks. We sought to understand what artificial intelligence is capable of as our ally, collaborator, and creative competitor,” says Mikhail Zheleznikov, one of the programme’s curators.
In addition to films, the programme includes lectures and workshops by philosophers, filmmakers, and media artists. The main section of CyberEye is the practical Neural Network Film Laboratory named after Dziga Vertov, where participants will learn how to interact with neural networks. The Laboratory is led by Italian tutor and filmmaker Andrea Gatopoulos. A collaborative film will be created following the workshop sessions.
Films:
- ecocalypse, 2024, Yana Cherkasova (Russia)
- Jizai, 2024, Maiko Endo (Japan)
- Algorithms of Beauty, 2022, Miléna Trivier (Belgium)
- Abyss, 2022, Jeppe Lange (Denmark)
- Leningrad 1976. Year of the Dragon, 2024, Vladislav Rumyantsev (Russia)
- Happy New Year, Jim, 2022, Andrea Gatopoulos (Italy)
- Time Sensitive Characters, 2024, Coralie Gourdon (France)
- Eschaton Ad, 2023, Andrea Gatopoulos (Italy)
FUTURUM
Curator: Mikhail Zheleznikov
“The programme features eight films whose creators have ventured far from the canons of classical documentary cinema, without explicitly setting out to make so-called ‘experimental films.’ The title Futurum symbolizes the hope for the continuation of this trend in the future of auteur cinema, free from industrial, commercial and academic conventions,” says curator of the programme Mikhail Zheleznikov.
Films:
- Plemya, 2024, Sasha Kozma (Moldova, Russia)
- Intention, 2024, Valeria Podbeltseva (Russia)
- Leningrad),
1999-2024, Ksenia Burdinova (Russia) - the space between), 2023, Irina Kofova (Russia)
- Journey to a Wonderful World), 2023, Lola Palmer (Russia)
- Smirnov Fedot), 2023, Misha Ketov (Russia)
- Again In Copenhagen, 2023, Veronica Pit (UK)
- Where the Lights Don’t Shine, 2024, Elizaveta Zharikova (Russia)
TANGEDY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARGENTINE CINEMA
Curator: Alexey Artamonov
A major retrospective of Argentine cinema spanning half a century. The programme features five films from the pool of the nation’s most celebrated cinema and two international arthouse events of the 21st century. The programme is presented with the support of the Embassy of Argentina in Russia.
“The Tangedy programme is not only a snapshot of the history of Argentine cinema. It also reflects the country’s challenging journey, with its search for its own path, military dictatorship, political emigration, and economic crisis. All of that is portrayed in iconic films from different years: from the Borges-inspired paranoid 1969 thriller Invasion to contemporary Argentine films that have rightfully gained international acclaim, such as Jauja by one of today’s leading minimalists, Lisandro Alonso, and 2022’s arthouse sensation Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella,” says the programme curator Alexey Artamonov.
Films:
- Invasion, 1969, Hugo Santiago (Argentina)
- Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes, 1998, Adrián Caetano & Bruno Stagnaro (Argentina)
- Tangos, the Exile of Gardel, 1985, Fernando E. Solanas (Argentina, France)
- Trenque Lauquen, 2022, Laura Citarella (Argentina, Germany)
- Jauja, 2014, Lisandro Alonso (Denmark, Mexico, France, Argentina, Germany, Netherlands)
- Juan Moreira, 1973, Leonardo Favio (Argentina)
- Man Facing Southeast, 1986, Eliseo Subiela (Argentina)
COUNTRY PATH CONVERSATIONS
A programme from Samizdat K!
This year, Message to Man is experimenting by involving the younger 20-year-old generation in the programming work. The young team from the St. Petersburg-based publication Samizdat K!, which has already gained popularity among cinephiles, will present its own programme. The curators of this programme include members of the Samizdat K! team: Diana Abu Yusef, Sveta Lang, Ira Lomakina, Nikita Lopatin, Natasha Prudnikova, Varya Smirnova, Polina Trubitsyna, and Dasha Chernova. The selection features works by Soviet and Russian film director Nikolay Dostal, leading young Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, Argentine’s cinema classic Fernardo Solanas, and one of the most prominent masters of 20th-century cinema Theo Angelopoulos.
“Recently, we feel like we are constantly on the road. Paradoxically, this state of being outside and on a continuous path can help us find our footing. The selection explores the human condition along the journey, starting with Nikolai Dostal’s subtle film Cloud-Paradise, where the protagonist forces himself towards a utopian future, and ending with Theo Angelopoulos’ Voyage to Cythera, about a man who has been wandering for a long time and finally returns home,” say members of Samizdat K! team.
Films:
- Kaili Blues, 2015, Bi Gan (China)
- Cloud-Paradise, 1991, Nikolai Dostal (Russia)
- The Journey, 1992, Fernardo Solanas (Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, UK)
- Voyage to Cythera, 1984, Theo Angelopoulos (Greece, Germany, Italy, UK)
SOUTH KOREA’S YOUNG CINEMA
Curator: Sung Moon
A rare case where a national cinema programme has been curated by an expert from the country it represents. The curator, Sung Moon, one of the leading programmers of the Jeonju International Film Festival, has selected a collection of debut films that are true gems of Korean cinema. This selection offers viewers an authentic glimpse into everyday life in South Korea.
“It’s hard to find a diverse range of emotions in popular Korean series available on global platforms. The worship of money, violence, despair, and revenge are not the only things that happen in my land. However, I think we should look at the various aspects of life in Korea with a warmer gaze,” says programme’s curator Sung Moon.
Films:
- A Wild Roomer, 2022, Lee Jeong-Hong (South Korea)
- Mimang, 2023, Kim Taeyang (South Korea)
- Sister Yujeong, 2024, Chung Haeil (South Korea)
- The Hill of Secrets, 2022, Lee Ji-eun (South Korea)
SAKHA CINEMA: HERE AND NOW
Curator: Alina Timofeeva
The programme is curated by Alina Timofeeva, a researcher of Yakut cinema and the creator of Discover Sakha Cinema, the region’s only media outlet dedicated to local films.
“Currently, the Sakha Republic has cultivated a solid foundation of cinematography teams and films spanning various genres. Unlike in much of Russia, not all young talents move to Moscow or St. Petersburg to study: one can master cinema and enter the industry directly in Yakutsk. The collection includes works by those who belong to a generation of filmmakers that matured during the heyday of the ‘Yakut new wave’ and were inspired by its masters,” says curator Alina Timofeeva.
Films:
- Cockoo, 2024, Evgeniy Nikolaev (Russia)
- Where The White Cranes Dance, 2024, Mikhail Lukachevsky (Russia)
- Timir, 2023, Aydin Ate (Russia)
- Yakutia — Between The Worlds, 2024, Vladimir Kocharyan (Russia, Armenia)
SOYUZMULTFILM: THE BEST OF 10 YEARS
Curator: Mikhail Aldashin
When I was little, I always looked forward to watching cartoons on TV. I waited with excitement to see Boniface the Lion, Winnie the Pooh, or The Mitten. Those films somehow breathed something essential into me, something necessary for life. The programme Soyuzmultfilm: the Best of 10 Years includes works from the past decade. Small but beautiful, they can still surprise, captivate, make you laugh, cry, inspire, and support. Films that help people live, even if just a little,” says Mikhail Aldashin, curator of the programme.
Films:
- The 7 Kids, 2020, Marina Karpova (Russia)
- About Our Cosmonauts, 2018, Galina Golubeva (Russia)
- Aport, 2016, Denis Voronin (Russia)
- The Witch & the Baby, 2020, Evgeniya Golubeva (Russia)
- The Sled, 2016, Olesya Shchukina (Russia)
- Vivat, Musketeers!, 2017, Anton Dyakov (Russia)
- Two Trams, 2016, Svetlana Andrianova (Russia)
- Simpleton Jack, 2015, Alexander Chernogorov (Russia)
- Conspiracy, 2021, Andrey Kuznetsov (Russia)
- Goats, 2016, Ekaterina Filippova (Russia)
- Coco’s Day, 2017, Tatyana Moshkova (Russia)
- Ladybug, 2015, Marina Karpova (Russia)
- Birds, by the Way, 2022, Alla Vartanyan (Russia)
- The Hen, 2014, Vasily Bedoshvili (Russia)
- My Friend Tiger, 2021, Tatyana Kiseleva (Russia)
- Moroshka, 2015, Polina Minchenok (Russia)
- Very Lonely Rooster, 2015, Leonid Shmelkov (Russia)
- Python and Guard, 2015, Anton Dyakov (Russia)
- Easy Busy, 2022, Ekaterina Ganakh (Russia)
- Magic Hock, 2016, Alexey Alexeev (Russia)
- Merry Grandmas!, 2020, Natalia Mirzoyan (Russia)
- Pik Pik Pik, 2014, Dmitry Vysotsky (Russia)
- Snow Bunnies, 2014, Elizaveta Manokhina & Polina Manokhina (Russia)
- Warm Star, 2020, Anna Kuzina (Russia)
- Trunky, 2017, Ekaterina Filippova (Russia)
MULTIVERSE
Curators: Diana Abu Yusef, Katerina Beloglazova, Maria Gotlib, Vasily Stepanov
Last year, the programmers of the Messages to Man’s International Competition faced a challenge: the competition received far more excellent films than it could accommodate. As a result, for the first time in the Festival’s history, an out-of-competition short film programme Multiverse was created. This year, it features documentaries, live-action, and animated films.
“Multiverse is an expansion of the competition. It mirrors Stanislavski’s ’circles of attention’: ’remote’, ’near’, and ’inner’. Stanislavski taught actors techniques for concentration, and in Multiverse, we identify three zones of attention within the flow of life: each of us simultaneously observes the big world, society, and looks within ourselves. Multiverse’s 21 films of trace these circles of life within each session. The audience will see films of radically different styles. Among them are films that have garnered a collection of prizes at major film festivals. We didn’t want to let them slip away, and we are thrilled to share them with you,” says Vasily Stepanov, one of the programme’s curators.
REMOTE CIRCLE:
- The Gaze, 2024, Oliver de Bree (Germany, Netherlands)
- Not Everyone Will Go into Space Either, 2024, Olya Losik (Russia)
- Gymnasts, 2024, Frédérique Menant (France)
- Exergo, 2023, Jorge Moneo Quintana (Spain)
- Baigal Nuur — Lake Baikal, 2023, Alisi Telengut (Germany, Canada)
- Memories of an Unborn Sun, 2024, Marcel Mrejen (Algeria, France, Netherlands)
- The Masterpiece, 2024, Àlex Lora (Spain)
NEAR CIRCLE:
- L’ailier, 2024, Alexandra Karelina (France)
- Lemon Tree, 2023, Rachel Walden (USA)
- wUF wUUF we are DOGS, 2023, Sofia Nikitina & Vitaly Ushakov (Russia)
- Ostatenham, 2024, Anaïs Ibert (France)
- After Father, 2024, Noushin Meraji (Iran)
- The Ghosts You Draw on My Back, 2023, Nikola Stojanovic (Serbia)
- All Women Do It, 2024, Marina Ziolkowski (France)
INNER CIRCLE:
- Ender’s Line, 2023, Gabriele Biasi (Italy)
- Lizzy, 2024, Susanna Wallin (USA)
- My Girl, 2024, Caroline Ophélie (France)
- Wandering Bird, 2023, Victor Dupuis (Belgium)
- Juxtaposed LAND, 2023, ALIMO (Poland, Saudi Arabia, Japan)
- Womb, 2024, Aline Flores (Brazil)
- Lullaby Queen, 2024, Sergey Yakovenko (Russia)
RUSSIAN YOUNG. CONTINUED
Last year, the Message to Man presented the programme Russian Young. Present Continuous, dedicated to young Russian cinema. In 2024, the team decided to repeat the experience, slightly altering the format. The section Russian Young. Continued consists of two sessions: one was curated by programmers of the International Competition and the other one by those of the National Competition.
“The industry’s interest in short films in Russia is immense (it is no coincidence that our festivals feature special competitions and sections for short films), but we believe we have managed to collect films that have remained invisible to our colleagues. Each of these films answers the question of what our country is experiencing today,” curators of the programme say.
Films:
- Casta Diva, 2024, Irina Taruntaeva (Russia)
- Anya, Look, 2024, Anton Agafonov (Russia)
- Runaway, 2023, Salome Kintsurashvili (Грузия, Russia)
- Spring Will Come, 2024, Anna Ulyanskaya (Russia)
- The Way, 2024, Megen Tarba (Russia, Abkhazia)
- Seems Like I’ve Been Looking Through the Window for Too Long, 2022, Gennady Lebedev (Russia)
- Not Just Any Day, 2024, Klavdiya Korshunova (Russia)
- Slow Speed, 2024, Ilya Pilipenko (Russia)
- Dew Point, 2024, Alexandra Gromova (Russia)
