Application deadline extended until July 1, 2020
XXX International Film Festival Message to Man will take place! We sincerely hope that the epidemiological situation in Russia and around the world will allow us to hold the Festival in the usual format in cinemas of St. Petersburg on November 3–8, 2020. Message to Man will become one of the first major international festivals of “the new era” after a long pause on the festival and film distribution scene.
Andrei Plakhov, Art Director of the Festival:
Today we are going through a peculiar period in the festival movement, when major annual events are being cancelled. Of course, some local festivals go on-line and try to find benefits in it. It is an interesting option, but we decided to hold Message to Man in the usual format, but to move the Festival from September to November.
We cannot predict how things will turn out, what the situation will be, whether social distancing will remain mandatory. But we hope to hold the Festival with live, direct contact between the film on the big screen and the audience.
We continue to select films for the programme and extend the application deadline until July 1, 2020. The three Festival competitions: International, National and In Silico Experimental Competition, are waiting for your new works.
For obvious reasons, this year’s Festival will not be as large-scale as the audience is used to, moving between a dozen sites where you can meet Werner Herzog, Paolo Sorrentino, Isabelle Huppert and other stars of auteur cinema. However, a smaller scale will allow us to focus on the most important things and remind us that the main festival action is unfolding not on the red carpet, but in the cinema hall. And the most important thing – the heart of the Festival – is its three competition programmes traditionally judged by three juries.
Festival competitions, as before, will be dedicated to modernity, modern man, textures and signatures of our time. Today we live in a difficult time, but crisis often gives rise to creativity, new situations and new starting points. The films that are sent to us and that we expect to receive testify to this very fact.
Alexei Medvedev, Programme Director of the Festival:
On the one hand, many documentary and fiction films about isolation have already been made. On the other hand, documentary filmmakers are always “in isolation”: their films are most often low-key and high-energy. Suffice it to recall the work of one of the previous winners of the Message to Man competition: the film Harmony by Lydia Sheinina.
We are not waiting for disruptive quarantine-themed films; but it is already clear that during this time many problems have become more prominent. Political situation in Russia is deteriorating and global changes are taking place in the US. Among other things, quarantine changes worldviews: people more often turn to eternal questions, rethink their positions. We are waiting for films like that.
How to submit a film application:
- through a form on the Festival website: https://message2man.com/
- through on-line platforms: FilmFreeWay, FestHome, FilmFestivalLife
No fee is charged for submitting an application to the national competition.
When applying to international and experimental competitions, a fee of €7 for short films (up to 40 minutes) and €15 for full-length films (40 to 120 minutes) is charged.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The history of the Message to Man comprises three decades of development of documentary cinema, short fiction and animated films.
- The Festival was founded in 1989 by film director Mikhail Litvyakov. Today he is the Honorary President of the Festival.
- Message to Man attracts around 30,000 visitors every year.
- In 2010, Alexei Uchitel, documentary and feature film director, People’s Artist of Russia, became the President of the Festival.
- There are three competitions at the centre of the Festival programme. Every year, the selection committee receives over 5,000 applications. More than 300 films take part in competition and out-of-competition programmes.
- Over 30 years of the Festival’s history, the jury, guests and participants have included: Paolo Sorrentino, Werner Herzog, Tonino Guerra, Aleksandr Sokurov, Viktor Kossakovsky, Garri Bardin, Volker Schlöndorff, Agnès Varda, Godfrey Reggio, Emir Kusturica, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Ulrich Gregor, Leo Hurwitz, Gerrit van Dyke, Sergei Dvortsevoi, Sergei Loznitsa, Mira Nair, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Ulrich Seidl, Semih Kaplanoglu, Abdelatif Kechiche, Bill Plimpton, Alan Berliner, Niko von Glazov, Helena Třzeštikovà, Marina Goldovskaya, Vitaly Mansky and many other prominent cinema figures.
- The Festival is accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers’ Associations FIAPF (France).
