The Best Films Of Odessa Film Festival

This year the Odessa film festival hosted more than 120,000 visitors. It opened with an unusual film – it was Reality by Quentin Dupieux. The choice of a difficult film from the very beginning fully represents the concept of the festival, heading for mainstream art. And here we must focus on the first word.

The main theme of the festival was “Woman in Cinema”. The jury was headed by a woman for the first time in six years.

Gold Dukes went to:

Song of the Songs (the best Ukrainian full-length film)

Mustang (Deniz Gamze Erguven was awarded for the best director’s work)

A Person In A Wall (won the grand prize, and Tamar Alkan was awarded for the best director’s work)

Embrace of the Serpent, Angels of Revolution, and A Live Hearth (got the special prizes from the jury).

And now let’s have a bit detailed talk about the films that impressed the viewers and the jury of the Sixth Odessa Film Festival.

«Song Of Songs» is based on Sholem Aleichem’s writings. The main story tells about the weekdays of the Jewish population in the early XX century and the history of Shymeku and Buzi, who have been in love with each other since childhood.

«Mustang» is a story about Turkish sisters. When they lost their parents, their relatives – a grandmother and an uncle – were involved in girls’ life and education. At first, everything wasn’t bad, but the older those girls were getting, the more regulations, restrictions, and prohibitions appeared. Their home has become a real prison. That’s when the girls realized they should run away. This is the story of five escapes and five lives, and you can watch it this fall.

«Embrace of the Serpent» brought the audience to distant impassable Colombian jungle. The philosophical movie tells about a trip about the American anthropologist and Amazonian shaman and hermit in search of Yakurna – the sacred plant, which teaches people to dream.

«Angels of Revolution» is a story of the Bolshevik attempts to “civilize” the northern lands of Russia. The director pushes an audience to the logical conclusion: not all people were physically destroyed. However, many of them were forced to deny their distinctiveness, to lose the awareness of their own identity and characteristics of their own culture. Khanty and Nenets were destroyed morally and socially. This is the idea enshrined in the final episode, which is burlesque and a bit creepy…

A number of equally worthy movies are out of nominations. Unfortunately, not all can become winners…

«Astragal» is a story about a broken bone, criminals, and love. A girl who escaped from prison is traveling with a fraud. And this is just the beginning of this story.

«Zenith» is intended to represent and to remind once again about the entire imperfection and injustice of the world we live in. The film is a reaction to the terrible Balkan war of the 1990s, which hasn’t ended… It shows three love stories, where love and hatred are tangled.

Dystopia «Under Electric Clouds» depicts near future. The central image of the film is an unfinished skyscraper, a modern Babel Tower rising above the stories of seven people, who seem unnecessary for this world.

«H» An unknown object appears in the contemporary Troy, somewhere in America, and its destructive force affects all residents, changing their behavior and characters. Meanwhile, two new Helenas live parallel lives…

«The Lobster» finds a pair to the end of its life. It happens the same way with people, who live in the world, where it is forbidden to be alone. If after 45-day-long detention in the Hotel a person can’t find a couple, they are transported to the forest – a place they belong.

«Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck» slightly opens the door to the unknown life of Kurt Cobain. It helps to understand it better. The movie includes interviews with his family and previously unknown recordings. The film is definitely worth seeing.

If you haven’t got a chance to visit the festival, put these films in your “To-Watch” list. And have a happy viewing!