"Programme-29" shows best Russian docs

The “Programme-29” is a Guild's initiative aiming to promote the national documentary films across the country. Before that, any Russian documentary film could hardly reach out its Russian audience. Despite the fact that the government annually invests about 500 billion roubles (almost $8 billion) into documentary film production, most of the produced films would never be seen by Russian filmgoers. The “Programme-29” serves to reduce the gap between national documentaries and their viewers. 

The project is receiving support from the national Ministry of Culture. In fact, the idea of its creation was born a year ago at the meeting between the Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky and the industry professionals. Medinsky proposed to make a joint project that would screen the best movies of 2013 to the Russian audience.

The event lasted for 20 days from December 10 to 30. Filmgoers from Vladivostok, Ekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Makhachkala Novosibirsk,Saint-Petersburg and Moscow watched the films at the local film clubs and theatres absolutely for free. 

Hundreds of people enjoyed the films and shared their experiences with the Guild. Iraida from Ekaterinburg after watching a film called “Russian dream" by Sergey Debizheb said "Russians needed more films like this because they taught us how to live in peace with each other.” 

Nikita from Izhevsk watched “Save and Protect" by Andrey Osipov and Evgeniy Malevsky. Nikita said that he would recommend this film to show in schools during Russian History lessons. He added “School programme needs a high quality media products because it is a tendency of the modern society. This film is a great example of what kind of media content the modern schools need.” 

After receiving a lot of interesting feedbacks, the Guid and the National Film Center decided to held a competition for the best film review. The results of this competition will be announced soon.