Saint Petersburg International Film Festival


Saint Petersburg International Film Festival takes place as part of the Saint Petersburg international film forum. This is Saint Petersburg's first competitive international festival for feature-length fiction films.

The Organisers

Festival Director – Maria Averbakh

Festival Artistic DirectorKirsi Tykkyläinen

Head of Selection Committee – Alexey Dunaevskiy

2013 boycott

On 22 August 2013 media reported that Wentworth Miller will boycott the festival—to protest against laws banning "homosexual propaganda" in Russia.

Awards

The SPIFF offers 5 awards:

Competition Programme

There were 14 films from different countries selected for the 2012 competition programme:
The festival's opening film

Le grand soir, 2012, dir. Benoît Delépine, Gustave Kervern, France-Belgium

The festival's closing film

Shadow Dancer, 2012, dir. James Marsh, Great Britain-Ireland

Out-of-competition programmes

The out-of-competition programmes showed films which displayed the most recent trends in world cinema as well as several retrospectives. 2012's festival had 11 out-of-competition programmes:
President of the Jury
Jury
Best film

Kolka Cool, dir. Juris Poškus, Latvia

Best director

Alexei Balabanov, I Also Want It, Russia

Best actor

Merab Ninidze, Invasion, dir. Dito Tsintsadze, Germany

Jury's special mention

Burghart Klaussner, Invasion, dir. Dito Tsintsadze, Germany

Best Actress

Emilie Dequenne, Our Children, dir. Joachim Lafosse, Belgium

Jury's special mention

Iveta Pole, Kolka Cool, dir. Juris Poškus, Latvia

Audience Prize

Road North, dir. Mika Kaurismäki, Finland