International Documentary Film Festival Flahertiana was held from 16th to 23rd of September for the 16th time already. Beside the International Competition there are Russian Flahertiana and Student Films Competition. In the International Competition “Flahertiana 2016” a total of 15 films took part, 19 films in National Competition, 16 films in Student Competition.

This year the selection committee members of Flahertiana had to watch almost 700 documentaries sent to the festival direction, which is a hundred more than a year ago. Aside from that, films were seen and chosen on the biggest international film festivals all over the world. The selection committee included Viktoria Belopolskaya, Chef  Editor of “Kultura” TV-channel, film critic Marina Drozdova and Boris Karadzhev, master of the Documentary film department in Gerasimov’s Institute of Cinematography.

Pavel Petchenkin, the President of Flahertiana, finds this year’s International Competition program anthropocentric: “All films reflect in their topics changes of the reality, and together with that the major changes in people’s lives. The main thought of all the documentaries is that the man is the measure of all things. This principle determines both the selection of films and the logic of our festival, which follows the aesthetics of Robert Flaherty”.

The International Jury headed by a director Doug Block awarded the “Big Golden Nanook” and money prize of 250 thousand rubles to Tom Fassaert (Netherlands) for the film “A Family Affair”.

For Original Artistic Solution “Silver Nanook” was given to the Russian film “24 Snow” by Mikhail Barynin.

Award for Discovery of New Subjects and New Heroes, “Silver Nanook”, was awarded to the film “Sonita” (director Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami; production of Germany, Switzerland, Iran). Directors of both films got 75 thousand rubles. 

Diploma of “Special Jury Mention” were awarded to Karen Guthrie (“The Closer We Get”, UK) and Ido Haar (“Presenting Princess Shaw”, Israel).

Audience award also went to Mikhail Barynin (“24 Snow”, Russia).

National Competition Jury Award for the best film of «Russian Flahertiana» program — «Small Golden Nanook» and money prize of 25 thousand rubles – went to Denis Shabaev (“Not My Job”). Diploma of “Special Jury Mention” was awarded to Veronika Solovieva («From Another Life») for Scenic Beauty, Pavel Medvedev («Joseph`s Land») for Multilayered Film and Camera Work and Evgeniy Grigoriev (“Looking On The Other Bank”) for Urban Identity Building.

Festival Organizing Committee awarded Natalia Gugueva (“Overdrive. Return Point”) for Relevance and Accuracy Of Topic Development.

Student Film Competition Award and money prize of 20 thousand rubles went to Andrey Ananin (dilogy “American Dream” and “The Smoke Of The Fatherland”). Diploma of  “Special Jury Mention” were awarded to Olesya Yepishina (“Who Is A Fool Now?") for Director`s Intuition, Nozanin Abdulvasieva and Anastasia Sergeeva ("Soon At The First Channel") for Relevance, Darina Umnova (“Love For A Million”) for a Portrait of the Heroine of Our Time.