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http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/600/42/378891.htm
Healing Moscow Film Fest Showcases Young, Old
19 June 2009
By Tom Birchenough / Special to The Moscow Times
The Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) that opens Friday will give the local film world a chance to calm down after its recent financial and political turmoil.
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Chief selector Kirill Razlogov said he hoped that MIFF's future would be based around its role as an "opener of new talents." Local presence includes Andrei Eshpai's "The Event", an adaptation of a Nabokov play, and, perhaps more viscerally, Georgian director Vano Burduli's "Conflict Zone," a human drama based around the chaos and collapse of the post-Soviet Caucasus.
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Two or three years ago, local producers were effectively saying that their local market had the money and audience to go its own way. Circumstances today mean that has changed considerably, with many projects postponed or halted in production. If MIFF can place itself as an intermediary in that process, it can only add to the festival's own long-term perspective.
The Moscow Film Festival runs June 19 to June 28. For full details, see www.moscowfilmfestival.ru.