Banned From Leaving Russia, Kirill Serebrennikov Thanks Cannes Crowd By FaceTime at ‘Petrov’s Flu’ Premiere

Petrov’s Flu, directed by the dissident Russian film-maker Kirill Serebrennikov, who’s laying the chaos on thick and fast. I’m liking the movie but many others are not.

Watching the tumultuous and punishing Russian extravaganza Petrov’s Flu is like suffering a physical assault in a dark alley, or having a load of garbage jammed down your throat and piled on top of you until you just can’t take it anymore. Experimental theater bad boy and 2018 Cannes competition Leto entrant Kirill Serebrennikov takes a throw-in-everything-including-the-kitchen sink approach to painting an appallingly bleak portrait of modern Russian life.

Kira Kovalenko’s Russian drama Unclenching The Fists won the Grand Prize in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar this year.

Christopher Vourlias Mubi, the London-based streamer and theatrical distributor that’s been on a buying spree this week in Cannes, has acquired the rights for North America, U.K., and a host of other territories for Kira Kovalenko’s “Unclenching the Fists,” which took home the top prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, Variety can reveal.Set in a former mining town in Russia’s North Ossetia region, “Unclenching the Fists” is the story of a young woman, played by Milana

Guy Lodge Film CriticCANNES — At a banner ceremony for female filmmakers, Russian writer-director Kira Kovalenko’s sophomore feature “Unclenching the Fists” won the top prize for best film in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival this evening, from a jury headed by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold.

Emma Corrin is celebrating their West End debut!

coronavirus.After founding the rock group Zvuki Mu (Sounds of Mu) in 1982, Mamonov became an underground cult figure in Moscow. He gained wider recognition after Soviet restrictions on rock music and alternative culture were lifted in the late 1980s as part of then-leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms.Mamonov further expanded his fame through acting.

CANNES, France -- Celebrated Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov is banned from leaving his home country, so he is attending the Cannes Film Festival virtually. Serebrennikov phoned into the red-carpet premiere of his film, “Petrov's Flu,” by FaceTime and spoke to the media on Tuesday by Zoom.A seat was left open for the 51-year-old director when “Petrov's Flu” premiered Monday in Cannes.

Guy Lodge Film CriticIt’s been two years since iconoclastic Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov was released from a 20-month period of house arrest on embezzlement charges widely considered to have been trumped up by the government. If things haven’t been plain sailing since then — the revived case ended in a suspended sentence last year, confining the director to his home country — he has at least been free to roam, work and film in Russia.

Christopher Vourlias Three years after his musical drama “Leto” bowed on the Croisette, Kirill Serebrennikov returns to Cannes’ main competition with “Petrov’s Flu,” a deadpan, hallucinatory romp through a post-Soviet Russia in the grips of a mysterious flu epidemic. The acclaimed director spoke to Variety about living with fear and making the most out of solitude.How did you get involved with “Petrov’s Flu”? I was hired to write the script.

If you’ve ever fancied taking the train from Moscow to the far northwestern Russian city of Murmansk above the Arctic Circle, Compartment No. 6 (Hytti No. 6) will almost certainly cure you of the urge. At the same time, Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s second film, which is about such a journey, offers up vivid emotional twists and turns that are charted with unusual acuity, qualities that will propel it to a modest but well noted life on the festival circuit.

Jessica Kiang For anyone who’s ever got drunk on bad schnapps with a stranger, for anyone who’s ever been properly alone in a nowhere-town and spoken to a dial tone just to look like they had something to do, for anyone who’s ever been asked how to say “I love you” in their language and has patiently sounded out the words for “Fuck you” … Juho Kuosmanen’s deeply delightful Cannes competition title “Compartment No.

“Clara Sola” and a naturalistic one in the African film “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds,” and it’s even surfaced in Charlotte Gainsbourg’s documentary about her mother, Jane Birkin, “Jane by Charlotte,” in Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II” and in Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World.”Of those films, most are by female directors.

Christopher Vourlias Germany’s Sola Media has acquired sales rights across a host of territories for “Finnick,” an animated feature from leading Russian animation studio Riki Group, Variety has learned. The companies will be introducing the film to buyers during the Cannes Film Market.The CGI-animated comedy follows the adventures of 13-year-old Christine, who befriends the young prankster Finnick — one of the furry invisible beings known as Finns — in unlikely circumstances.

He may be barred from leaving Russia and thus unable to travel to Cannes, but arthouse cinema favorite Kirill Serebrennikov is refusing to let that dampen his spirit ahead of the premiere of his latest movie, Petrov’s Flu, in the French fest’s Competition.

Naman Ramachandran “Postman” by Russian filmmaker Klim Tukaev has won the first prize at the sixth Nespresso Talents global short film competition.“Bagman,” by Jan Kellner, took the second prize, while “Speaking in Flowers,” by Nicolina Sterbet, took third.