Organizers of "Kunaki" Film Festival refuse to show feature films

The 11th North-Caucasian Open Cinema and Television Festival "Kunaki" (Friends) will screen 51 films. This year, the organizers rejected all the feature films, treating the last year's experience as "unsuccessful." According to Ilyas Bogatyryov, Director of the Festival, films by directors from the Caucasus form less than a quarter of the main programme, which has to do with the "low professional level" of local filmmakers.

The Festival will be held on November 15-20 in Abkhazia with the participation of film directors from Nalchik, Makhachkala, Vladikavkaz, Krasnodar, Adygea, Moscow and Abkhazia.

Mr Bogatyryov has noted that the festival programme is very bright. According to his story, the major part of the programme includes films by directors from other regions of Russia and the countries of the close abroad.

"The cinematography situation in the Caucasus is very bad: there are no schools; and Sukhumi even has no movie theatre," he has added.

However, he has named several good works, whose "professional level is caused by the high-qualitative education of the creators."

Residents of Sukhumi said that they would be interested to see films about Abkhazia and the Caucasus.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.