XIII Kazan International Muslim Film Festival

Film submissions for the 13th Kazan Muslim Film festival are now closed. The festival organising committee received 782 entries from 61 countries. The shortlisted films in three categories of fiction, documentary and animation are to be announced on July 1, 2017.

The films by an Afghan director Shahrbano Sadat, the winner of the top prize of the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight 2016, Chinese directors and producers Wang Xuebo and Zhang Wei and a Tajik scriptwriter and director Sharofat Arabov are among the entries of Kazan Muslim Film Festival 2017.

The festival has been gaining popularity for the last five years: the number of entries has grown from 300 in 2013 to 600 in 2015 and over 700 in 2017, whereas the festival geography has now covered 61 countries comparing to 40 countries in 2013 and 53 countries in 2015.

“The growth of these numbers is nice, but it is definitely not our initial aim”, says Albina Nafigova, Kazan Muslim Film Festival festival director of programming. “We are not aiming to achieve the participation of all nations’ representatives. It is not possible, at least due to regional differences in the development of film-making in the world. The concept of the festival significantly influences the entries’ geography as well. We consider that the increase in the number of entries means the growth of the popularity of the Kazan film festival among the global film community”.

In 2017, Kazan film festival received entries from Azerbaijan, Albania, Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Bahrein, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Ireland, Indonesia, India, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lebanon, Malta, Malaysia, Morocco, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Netherlands, Nigeria, the UAE, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Shri-Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, USA and Uzbekistan.

“This year, we have an incredible number of films from South Asia and South-East Asia (Nepal, Sri-Lanka, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh), the number of Russian entries to the festival is increasing as well. At the same time, the Arab region films are remaining well-represented”, comments Albina Nafigova.

The festival jury 2017 will be composed of Sergey Lavrentyev (President, Moscow), Iván Forgács (Hungary), Sergey Anashkin (Moscow) and Adilya Khaybullina (Kazan).

The 13th Kazan Muslim Film Festival will be held from the 5th to the 11th of September, 2017.

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Since 2005, Kazan Muslim Film Festival is one of the largest film forums held annually in the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The concept of the festival is reflected through its official motto ‘Through dialogue of cultures to the culture of dialogue’. The festival focuses on films supporting the ideas of peace-building, tolerance and humanity and promoting intercultural dialogue.