MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) – A feature documentary on reporters covering a separatist war and the uneasy peace in Russia’s Chechnya has won two prizes at this year’s Locarno film festival in Switzerland.
“See You in Chechnya” by Alexander Kvatashidze from the ex-Soviet state of Georgia won the Open Doors Production Award and the ARTE Open Doors Award, the Variety online entertainment magazine reported Tuesday.
The collective portrait of six war reporters spanning 15 years was inspired by Kvatashidze’s own experience as a wannabe war photographer, it said.
In 1999, the director crossed the Caucasus Mountains from Georgia to Chechnya to photograph the war and to impress a French female photographer with whom he had fallen in love, Kvatashidze told Variety.
The movie, which is reportedly set for release next year, was one of the films participating in the festival’s co-production lab, which aims to help directors and producers find financial partners to complete production of their films.
The second Chechen war started in August 1999 and eventually brought the North Caucasus republic back under Moscow’s control. Chechnya had gained de-facto independence from Moscow following a brutal two-year war with Russian federal forces that started in 1994.
A string of films and television series on the Chechen wars have been released in Russia. Some of them have stirred controversy, including the shockingly violent “War,” a 2002 film by Alexei Balabanov.
In 2007, renowned Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov won a special Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for “12,” a courtroom drama about an orphaned Chechen youth accused of murdering his stepfather, an officer in the Russian Army.
In May, the filming of a thriller starring French film star Gerard Depardieu and British actress Elizabeth Hurley started in Chechnya. Depardieu plays a Chechen man who comes to Moscow to avenge his dead son.
