Saint Petersburg international film festival

Saint Petersburg International Film Festival (Russian: Са́нкт-Петербу́ргский междунаро́дный кинофестива́ль, translit. Sánkt-Peterbúrgskiy mezhdunaródniy kinofestivál; abbreviated as SPIFF) will take place as part of the Saint Petersburg international film forum. This is Saint Petersburg’s first competitive international festival for feature-length fiction films.

Festival Director – Maria Averbakh
Festival Artistic Director – Kirsi Tykkyläinen
Head of Selection Committee – Alexey Dunaevskiy

On 22 August 2013 media reported that Wentworth Miller will boycott the festival—to protest against laws banning "homosexual propaganda" in Russia.

The SPIFF offers 5 awards:

There were 14 films from different countries selected for the 2012 competition programme:

The festival’s opening film
Le grand soir, 2012, dir. Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern, France-Belgium
The festival’s closing film
Shadow Dancer, 2012, dir. James Marsh, Great Britain-Ireland

The out-of-competition programmes showed films which displayed the most recent trends in world cinema as well as several retrospectives. 2012’s festival had 11 out-of-competition programmes:

President of the Jury

Jury

Best film
Kolka Cool, dir. Juris Poškus, Latvia
Best director
Alexei Balabanov, I Also Want It, Russia
Best actor
Merab Ninidze, Invasion, dir. Dito Tsintsadze, Germany
Jury’s special mention
Burghart Klaussner, Invasion, dir. Dito Tsintsadze, Germany
Best Actress
Emilie Dequenne, Our Children, dir. Joachim Lafosse, Belgium
Jury’s special mention
Iveta Pole, Kolka Cool, dir. Juris Poškus, Latvia
Audience Prize
Road North, dir. Mika Kaurismäki, Finland

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Wikipedia