Festival Data:

• Established: 1990
• Genre: General
• Attendance: 30000
• Media Attendance: 170
• Accredited Industry Attendance: 100
• Total Number of Films Screened: 136
• Total Screenings: 110
• # of Shorts Screened: 39
• # of Features Screened: 97
• Accreditations: ECFF, FIPRESCI

• Competitive
• Has Panels

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

Held on the Black sea coast in Sochi, Open Russian Film Festival "Kinotavr" brings together the top talents of Russian cinema: directors, producers, actors, script writers, directors of photography. They come to participate in the country’s main cinematic event.

The ten days of the festival are filled with a variety of events, among which people can choose according to their own interest. Thus, “Kinotavr” is:

• Competition, non-competition and special screenings of the most interesting films of the year. The tradition of the special program “Cinema on the Square” is especially precious to the citizens and visitors of Sochi. In the evenings, on the big square in front of the Winter Theatre, some thousand people gather to watch great cinema directly under the starry sky of Sochi.
• Professional round tables, masters-classes, press conferences with cinematographers.
• The impressive opening and closing ceremonies of “Kinotavr”, with the opening highlight of the so-called “Star Walk”, along which the most popular filmmakers and actors make their way to the Winter Theatre.
• The cultural program: concerts by stars, shows and entertainment.

The history of “Kinotavr” began in 1990, when the non-state, independent company “Moscow Suburbs” under the direction of Mark Rudinstein organized a “Festival of Un-bought Cinema” in Podolsk with the aim of supporting national cinema at a time when the national distribution network had collapsed. Rudinstein’s initiative was the first response by cinematographers to the problems of the Russian film industry during perestroika, which was connected, above all, with the reductions in film financing. This undertaking received support from cinema audiences, and in 1991 the national festival “Kinotavr” was born in Sochi, headed by Mark Rudinstein and Oleg Yankovsky, the festival’s permanent president since 1993.

From 1994 onwards, Sochi hosted simultaneously two festivals: the Open Russian Film Festival (ORFF) and the International Film Festival (IFF), registered with the International Federation of Associations of Film Producers (FIAPF).

In 2005 “Kinotavr”, the largest Russian film festival, changed owners. “Kinotavr’s” founder Mark Rudinstein passed his “child” into the hands of Alexander Rodniansky and Igor Tolstunov. A board of trustees of the festival was set up, which includes: Peter Aven, President of the shareholding company “Alpha Bank”; Oleg Deripaska, General Director of the shareholding company “Russian Aluminium”; Vitali Ignatenko, General Director of “ITAR-TASS”; Alexander Tkachev, Governor of the Krasnodar Region; Mikhail Shvydkoi, Head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography; Konstantin Ernst, General Director of the shareholding company “First Channel”.

Film Submissions:

• Call for Entry: http:/ / www.kinotavr.ru/ en/ 2011/