The second edition of the VOICES Festival - Vologda Independent Cinema from European Screens - took place from July 5th to 10th, 2011, in the beautiful and historic Russian city of Vologda.
The festival revolved around two activities:
Competition: the Competition presented a selection of first and second European feature films
Workshops: master-classes, retrospectives, tributes, professional meetings, round tables... organized throughout the festival, which gave participants the opportunity to exchange views
This festival aspires to be a platform for creation and knowledge and will certainly lead to collaborations in the future.
This year we have had the honour of presenting the second annual Festival VOICES (Vologda from European Independent Cinema Screens) and are delighted to announce that it went very well. The purpose of this festival is first of all to promote the work of new directors and to reward the best achievements, but also to allow a real dialogue between the various players in the film industry through round tables, master classes and specific activities for all our guests.
The Festival was held from July 5 to July 10 in the town of Vologda in Russia, where stunning views, beautiful buildings and local folklore added a magical note to our festival.
Our partners, VIP guests, journalists and people in the Vologda region have all been enchanted by the beautiful film programming of films in the competition and out of competition and gave us excellent feedback on the quality of events planned throughout the festival. We are very pleased with the result and hope to offer another VOICES Festival in 2012 which is just as colourful as its predecessors.
Celebrating the year of Italy in Russia, we focused our selection of non-competition films on the main classics of Italian cinema. It is for this reason that we asked Claudia Cardinale, a major actress in Italian cinema, to be the patron of the festival this year.
"Young talents need help and support - these people are not worldwide celebrities, but it is only a matter of time." Claudia Cardinale
This year's jury was chaired by the British director Hugh Hudson, and was composed of 5 other members all from different parts of the world of cinema with Caterina Murino, Italian actress and model, the Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (VOICES Festival winner with his 2010 film "My Joy"), the Russian actress Ksenia Rappoport and Stefan Kitanov, director of the Sofia film Festival.
The various awards delivered during VOICES are intended to bring to the forefront the talents of young filmmakers, writers and actors so as to help them in their careers. This year the Grand Prize of the Festival VOICES (with a reward of 30 000 euros) was delivered to the film Tyrannosaur, first film by Paddy Considine. The film Pure by Lisa Langseth won the prize for best director and the award for best actress (Alicia Vikander), and the Best Screenplay was awarded to Brigitte Sy for her autobiographical film Free Hands.
Russian director Alexander Sokurov was also able to inaugurate his own prize for young filmmakers. He came to Vologda to give a master class and presented the prize to the film Dad by Vlado Skafar (Slovenia).
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