Organisers of Moscow Film Festival say Litvinenko documentary was not entered in time

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The new programme director of the Moscow International Film Festival, Kirsi Tykkyläinen, a Finn, says that the focus of this year's festival is on Russian cinema.
      Nevertheless, the most internationally topical Russian film, a documentary on the murdered former Russian secret agent Alexandr Litvinenko made by director Andrei Nekrasov, is not one of the films to be screened at the event.
      Documentaries are to be shown in a separate Free Thought series, but the Litvinenko film will not be among them. Organisers say that scheduling was the problem.
     
"They offered the documentary on Friday. The series had been fixed by then", Tykkyläinen says.
      In the previous week, Nekrasov screened his documentary, entitled Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case, in Cannes. At the time, the director hoped that the MIFF could showcase the movie, as other types of distribution in Russia would be unlikely.
      The organisers of the film festival, which is taking place in late June, have close relations with Russia's culture authorities.
      The official programme includes about 30 new Russian films. There will also be an extensive sampling of the history of Russian and Soviet cinema, including a retrospective of films made on the verge of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, entitled "Farewell, USSR".


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Break-in at Finnish house of director of Litvinenko documentary (28.5.2007)
  Anti-democracy: A letter from Russia (28.11.2006)

Links:
  Moscow International Film Festival
  Internet Movie Database: Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case (2007)

Helsingin Sanomat