The organizers of the annual Kazan Muslim Film Festival have announced the films included in the competition program. Among them there are 14 works by Tatarstan film directors. The short-list of the festival, which will take place from 5 to 10 September in Kazan, comprises a total of 50 films from around the world.
According to Gulnara Abikeeva, Chairman of the Selection Committee of the Kazan International Muslim Film Festival, there is one Tatar film in each competition program. ‘I was pleasantly surprised that so many national films are made in Tatarstan, many of them are in the Tatar language’, she stressed.
The competition program of the Muslim Film Festival includes 5 nominations: full-length feature films, short-length feature films, short-length documentaries, and a nomination created to support Tatarstan cinematographers in 2017 – the national competition.
The main full-length feature film nomination featured the film by Tatar film director Ildar Yagafarov ‘Are You Alive?’ The script was written by playwright Mansur Gilyazov, the son of the republic’s national writer Ayaz Gilyazov. The prototypes of the main characters in the film – the family of doctors Tamerlan and Farida Islamov – are the spouses who live in the Zainsk region of Tatarstan, Talgat Suleimanov, a trauma surgeon, and his wife Guzel, a therapist. Mansur Gilyazov, who was welcome in the Suleimanovs’ house, had repeatedly heard stories from them about their medical practice and had seen the doctors’ worries about their patients. This is how the plot about the heroes of our time emerged.
‘In this film we would like to reveal the soul of the Tatar people through the family, where the love for the native language and national traditions is very strong. It is important to show who the Tatars really are – simple, honest, proud, loyal, fair, and that they are able to unite during hard times’, Ildar Yagafarov, the author of the film, noted in his interview.
The short-length feature film nomination featured the film by Sergey Bataev, a native of the Alekseevsk region of the republic, ‘Fighting Fish’. The plot is based on relations between adults and children as exemplified by one family. According to the film director, this is a real story, a part of his childhood. ‘We got into mischief and got punished, and that formed the basis for this film. With the scriptwriters we finalized the story and made it more dramatic’, Sergey Bataev said.
According to the plot, in the village there are only a couple of tractors, a potato field and a village shop, where one day an aquarium with fish appears on the counter. Two sons of an ordinary worker cannot take their eyes off the curiosity, but, of course, the aquarium is beyond their father’s means. But he has already decided that he will do his best in order to make his children happy. And for this he may have to compromise his honor and sacrifice his relationship with a person who trusted him.
In the full-length documentary film nomination, the film ‘Between the Seven Islands’ by Tatarstan film director Almaz Nurgaliev will compete for the top prize.
The village of Semiostrovo in the Aktanysh region of the Republic of Tatarstan, which is the subject of the film, was in a flood zone, and in 1976 the population leaves those lands. Only one person remains. He is an old man at the age of 83, Gabdullah – the only inhabitant of the once large and prosperous village. Alone for several kilometers, Gabdullah does without everything that fills modern life: electricity, heating, Internet, shops, cars – without civilization. It is difficult for modern people to imagine how to live without a refrigerator, how to wash their clothes in the river and drink water from it, how to melt snow in order to have a bath. For Gabdullah this is reality.
‘’Between the Seven Islands’ is a story of thousands of relocated families, the memory of villages that have already passed into oblivion, a symbol of steadfastness and fortitude’, the authors of the film noted.
The short-length documentary film nomination featured the film ‘One’ by Tatarstan film director Bulat Minkin. This documentary tells about a person who spent 18 years in solitary confinement.
‘The documentary ‘One’ by film director Bulat Minkin is an example of a very subtle historical reconstruction. On the whole, the films presented in the competition program show that Tatar film art is gaining strength’, Gulnara Abikeeva shared her opinion.
10 Tatarstan films are presented in the National Competition special nomination. In total, about 600 applications from 45 countries were received for this year’s competition. One can find detailed information about the short-list of the festival on its official website.
Ilmira Gafiyatullina
Photo: KIMFF official website