Films from Austria, Germany, Iran, Romania to participate in Main Competition of Moscow International Film Festival

MOSCOW. April 2 (Interfax) - Eleven films from Germany, Austria, Iran, Bangladesh and some other countries will participate in the Main Competition of the 46th Moscow International Film Festival due to take place on April 19-26, while the total number of the festival's films will exceed 230, chairman of the festival's qualification commission Ivan Kudryavtsev said.

"This year, we have over 230 films in the competition and out-of-competition programs, which is approximately 20% more than last year," Kudryavtsev said at a festival press conference.

The festival will feature over 30 international and world premieres, "a third more than last year, which means our festival proves its reputation as a global premiere venue," he said.

As for the competition's geography, he said that Russia ranked first by number of films, followed by China. France ranks third with more than 20 films, Spain comes fourth, and Iran comes fifth with 14 films. Twelve films will be presented by the United States, ten by Brazil, and eight by India and Italy each, he said.

"We will have 21 countries from the so-called unfriendly list with their films this year. This is a bit less than last year, when we had numerous co-productions with a large number of participatory states," Kudryavtsev said.

Fourteen countries which did not take part in last year's festival will present their projects this year. These include Hungary, Greece, Estonia, Austria, Morocco, Paraguay, Uzbekistan and African countries.

"Things may change by the time the festival opens, as often happens. The logistics and the lists of those who will attend and who will not are being clarified," as a film cannot be screened without its makers according to regulations, he said.

The Moscow International Film Festival is the second oldest festival in the world after the Venice Film Festival. The first Moscow International Film Festival was held in 1935. Back then, it was called the Soviet Film Festival in Moscow. Sergei Eisenstein was the chair of the first festival's jury. The festival has been a regular event since 1959. It was held once every two years until 1999 and became an annual event afterwards. The festival was traditionally held in June until it was moved to April because of the FIFA World Cup in 2018. It was then decided that the festival would be held in April on a regular basis.