The Calvert Journal Film Festival: 14 days of New East cinema online
Calvert 22 Foundation and The Calvert Journal present:
The Calvert Journal presents The Calvert Journal Film Festival — a journey across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia through the lens of the region’s independent filmmakers.
Taking place online between 18 and 31 October, the festival will screen 35 films across seven categories: documentary feature, animation film, fiction feature, student film, experimental film, short film, and special screenings. In six of the categories, entries will compete for the prize of best film, awarded by a jury of renowned industry figures. The special screenings category is an out-of-competition group of special screenings, featuring five more boundary-pushing films. Festival screenings will be open to viewers worldwide, and a special audience prize will also be given to one film from across all categories.
Films will be available for 48 hours on the festival platform, with tickets for individual films available alongside wider category and festival passes. A special series of articles, interviews, and online events will also run alongside the screenings, to spark new conversation on the region’s challenges, opportunities, and contemporary identity.
Spanning feature-length and short films from Tallinn to Tashkent, the festival’s kaleidoscopic programme celebrates a diversity of cinematic perspectives. The programme boasts seven world premieres, including Routes, a feature documentary on migrant’s journeys across the Balkans, Ok Good, a documentary musical on life in Russia’s remote rural areas, All the Dreams We Dream, an animated short on the 1931 famine in Kazakhstan by filmmaker Asel Kadyrkhanova, and The Moon, an experimental film based on an Udmurtian folk tale. The festival also features award-winning black-and-white period drama Nova Lituania, animated Oscar submission My Favourite War, and Rhythms of Lost Time, an ethnographic film hailing from Tajikistan. Also on offer are Warsaw: A City Divided, a documentary on Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto in the 40s, award-winning Romanian teenage drama Otto the Barbarian, and Cosmonaut, the animated tale of a retired Soviet astronaut.
The Calvert Journal Film Festival is a window to explore diverse perspectives on the region through the lens of local independent filmmakers. Films from the New East often go underrepresented in mainstream programmes. As an award-winning magazine dedicated to covering the culture and creativity of the New East, The Calvert Journal is committed to use its online presence to bring cinema from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia to global audiences.
See https://filmfestival.calvertjournal.com/welcome.