Over its more than 20-year history, the Spirit of Fire debut film festival has discovered and supported dozens of aspiring filmmakers. We remember some of those who brought their first works to Ugra.
Rustam Mosafir
The future director of the fantasy "Skif" and the TV series "The King and the Fool" brought his full-length debut "Runaways" to the "Spirit of Fire" in 2014. This is the story of a revolutionary who escaped from hard labor, who escapes from pursuit through the taiga wilds, and the mute wife of a gold miner helps him. Horse chases, rafting on a mountain river, stunning landscapes and legends of the indigenous peoples of Altai - based on Gleb Pakulov’s book “The Witch’s Key,” the film turned out to be an excellent Russian example of the Western genre and immediately demonstrated its author’s interest in unusual worlds, bright characters and, of course, music .
Paolo Sorrentino
The director, who became a symbol of the renaissance of Italian cinema, brought his debut film “The Extra Man” to Ugra in 2003, to the very first film festival. Naples, 1980s, the heroes of the film - an eccentric singer and a football coach - are very different people in temperament, but they are united by desperate attempts to find themselves. One of the roles is played by Tony Servillo, whom Sorrentino invited to “Amazing”, “The Great Beauty”, “Loro” and “The Hand of God”.
Alexey Fedorchenko
Despite the fact that Yuri Gagarin is considered to be the first cosmonaut, the director of the film “First on the Moon” claims that attempts to conquer space began much earlier. Back in 1938, a Soviet cosmonaut took a step on the lunar surface. But since contact with him was immediately lost, the authorities decided to destroy all evidence of the failed mission. A mix of supposedly chronicles and supposedly real interviews with contemporaries of the era - Fedorchenko’s mockumentary was made so talentedly and slyly that even employees of the Russian Space Agency bought it - they called the author to ask where he got such unique footage.
Peter Zelenka
Festival viewers definitely remember his film “Chronicles of Ordinary Madness,” which was triumphantly shown at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2005. Three years earlier, the Czech brought to Khanty-Mansiysk his other film, “The Year of the Devil,” a pseudo-documentary sketch about the life of two musicians, with whom all sorts of absurdities happen every now and then: one will thunder in rehab, the other will lose the power of speech.
Andrew Kravchuk
The drama “The Italian” was the second full-length film by the future director of “Admiral” and “Viking,” but the first to be shot alone. The thrilling story of an orphanage child adopted by an Italian family, but looking for his mother, received the Audience Award and the Prize for Best Actor to Kolya Spiridonov. This year Andrey Kravchuk is again a guest of the festival; he will perform a master class in the educational program.
Source of photo materials: Kinopoisk
