The Russian Film Festival 2021 will held in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the CIS countries

During the series of 2020 presentations, RFF attracted +120,000 viewers and became the first online project in the history of the Russian film industry to target a wide international audience. This year, the event expands its geography: this month June starts on Latin American platform Qubi, which is available in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, and with later events to take place in Kazakhstan, where they will be held together with the Russian online cinema Okko. The RFF-Kazakhstan will be the first online event dedicated to Russian cinema in the CIS.

Next months, it will move on to Asia, and, in South Korea, it will take place on the largest local platform Homechoice. The current reach of the festival also includes India, Azerbaijan, and Israel. As the RFF plans to become a traditional annual event, this fall it will go back to the RFF-2020 countries such us Mexico, Spain, and Brazil. The program is aimed at the widest foreign audience, offering a selection of fiction, documentary, and animation films of recent years, awarded at Russian and foreign festivals, in their original language with subtitles.

Among the feature films are Dear Comrades by Andrey Konchalovsky, Conference by Ivan Tverdovsky, Frenchman by Andrey Smirnov, Doctor Liza by Oksana Karas, Silver Skates by Mikhail Lokshin, On the Edge by Eduard Bordukov, The North Wind by Renata Litvinova, A Dog Named Palma by Alexandr Domogarov Jr., Deeper! by Mikhail Segal, The Whaler Boy by Philip Yuriev, The Man from Podolsk by Semyon Serzin, Sputnik by Yegor Abramenko, Fire by Alexei Nuzhny, Text by Klim Shipenko, Has anyone seen my girl? by Angelina Nikonova. On the animated side, The Snow Queen, Three Cats and Space Dogs: Return to Earth. For the first time, documentaries will be added, including Bears of Kamchatka. The Beginning of Life by Irina Zhuravleva and Vladislav Grishin. The full geography and the program of the festival can be check in the website. 

Svetlana Maximchenko, Head of the Cinematography Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, explained: 'Interest in foreign films is growing all over the world today, and the leading international markets are paying close attention to the content produced by our film industry. It is important to keep up with this trend and develop a system of support for domestic cinema abroad. We are already producing content that is relevant and in demand at international festivals. The RFF aims to become one of the key mechanisms for promoting our industry. Now, we have substantially expanded the festival’s geography, opening new advancement opportunities for our filmmakers'.
 
Evgenia Markova, CEO of Roskino, remarked: 'The Russian film industry has made impressive gains over the last few years. Now our goal is to introduce our projects not only to representatives of the industry, including content buyers and producers, but also to the end viewer by sparking an interest in Russian cinematography. That’s why we have put together a program of films created by iconic film directors and studios. We consider the RFF as a way to analyze regional markets and to spread the word about Russian projects and talents. I thank all of our Russian and foreign partners for the support of this initiative'.
 
Leonid Vereshchagin, 3T Studio CEO, producer, explained: 'We are glad that two grand high-budget films from our studio, Fire and Silver Skates, have been included in the festival program. These are large-scale spectacular projects which are unique for Russia in their complexity of production. Our projects have sparked great interest among international buyers: Fire has already been sold to the USA, France, Germany, Italy and the Middle East, and Silver Skates was released under the Netflix Originals brand'. 

Fedor Bondarchuk, Art Pictures Studio founder, director, producer, added: 'Recent years have shown that spectators strive for unique plots and, in particular, stories from Russia. I can see this trend both as a director and as a producer of Egor Abramenko’s Sputnik, which was #1 on American iTunes and has been sold to more than 40 countries. An increasing number of colleagues from abroad are showing interest in Russian film production. They look at us, when start searching for authentic and new voices'.  

Yuriy Borisov, actor, concluded: 'Thanks to projects like the RFF, we can learn from each other’s experiences, meet online, contribute to developing the Russian cinema industry, develop personal growth, share our impressions and emotions, explore new horizons, faces, and names. Cinema has no boundaries! Sending my greetings from Russia, wish you to watch good movies'.