2016 Listapad Film Festival to open in Minsk today.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko has welcomed the participants and guests of the festival.
“Traditionally, every year in November the capital of Belarus receives well-known directors, offering a rich palette of feature films and documentaries from around the world to the viewers. The works presented at the festival have already received high accolades from professionals and cinema connoisseurs. This year's festival is taking place in the Year of Culture, when the state’s special attention is drawn to supporting artists’ creative initiatives and searching for promising youth projects”, the President’s address reads.
By Olga Medved: Towards Inspiration is the slogan of the 23rd Minsk International Film Festival Listapad scheduled to launch today. It will feature 159 films from 45 countries, this year’s debutant being Lebanon.
The Festival’s press centre and headquarters have opened long before the launch of Listapad and are operating in non-stop mode. The press centre’s main festival venue is the Centralny Cinema, which hosted media accreditation a few days before the opening ceremony. About 100 applications to cover Listapad events have been submitted by agencies and printed media since early autumn.
The competition programme comprises of about 80 auteur movies presented in 6 categories: the main feature film competition, documentary film competition, Youth on the March competition, national film school competition, Listapadzik children’s and youth film competition and national competition.
In addition to film screenings, the programme will include tens of events aimed at popularising cinema. For instance, the Belarusian Cinema History Museum will host a photo exhibition by director Janis Streics, a retrospective of posters to films by Polish classic Andrzej Wajda will be on display at the Savitsky Art Gallery and an exhibition dedicated to the origin and development of cinema in Belarus will be available at the National History Museum. Besides, meetings and press conferences with the Festival’s outstanding guests will be held as part of the programme.
