History of the Festival Flahertiana dates back to the beginning of the nineties.

In the end of XX century at the film studio in Sverdlovsk (nowadays’ Yekaterinburg), a team of prominent filmmakers worked. Among them, there were Andrey Anchugov, Serguey Miroshnichenko, Andrey Zhelezniakov, Georgiy Negashev, Boris Kustov, Aleksey Fedorchenko and other filmmakers whose films have received a lot of prizes at major European and American festivals.

They all had the same desire, to tell the truth about the Soviet Union and to focus on the life of ordinary people who had never been in the centre of documentary filmmakers’ attention before. In their films, they all used filming methods introduced by American filmmaker Robert Flaherty in his film “Nanook of the North”. Long-term follow-up and «habitual» camera have become the directing platform for Yekaterinburg documentary school.

The Flahertiana festival named after this American filmmaker rests upon principles first used by Robert Flaherty in his film “Nanook of the North”. These are films where the hero lives on the screen a part of his life directed by the author according to the laws of dramatic art. All decisions of the festival selection commission, which consists of film critics Viktoria Belopolskaya and Marina Drozdova and filmmakers Boris Karadzhev and Pavel Petchenkin, are made based on these principles.

The first edition of the festival was held in 1995 and until 2006 it was held once in two years. That time it was more like a theoretic workshop, not competition.

Since 2006 the festival officially became annual international documentary film festival with international competition jury and FIPRESCI jury.

The festival laureates are awarded in the following nominations:

• Grand Prix for the best documentary of the festival
• Award for Discovery of New Subjects and New Heroes
• Award for Original Artistic Solution
• National Competition Jury Award for the best film of the «Russian Flahertiana» program.
• Audience Award is awarded to film director, who is selected by public voting throughout the festival. (Only international competition program movies can be selected).
• Award for the best student film.

Besides main competition program, there is “Russian Flahertiana” program which includes best Russian films of Flahertiana aesthetics. The winner of the program is determined based on audience voting. The festival prize fund amounts to 500 000 rub. Perm Krai Government is the main sponsor of the festival.