Among the Odesa International Film Festival's (OIFF’s) numerous industry events, much interest was shown in the panel bearing the title “Film Festivals Between Civil Society Values and Politics”, co-organised by the host festival and Cottbus Film Festival. 

The talk was moderated by Bernd Buder, Cottbus' programme director, and the participants included Julia Sinkevych, general producer of the OIFF; Max Ciorbă, film director and part of the CRONOGRAF International Documentary Film Festival team (Moldova); Ana Chkonia, programme coordinator at the Tbilisi International Film Festival; documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky, who is also the president of Artdocfest (Russia); Igor Soukmanov, programme director of the Listapad Minsk IFF; Melik Karapetyan, head of the Golden Apricot IFF (Armenia); and Samaya Asgarova, a theatrical distributor from Azerbaijan. 

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The discussion revolved around the practical problems that festivals from these countries have in common, and focused on their special position as former Soviet territories, over which Russia is still looming large, both economically and politically. 

One of the problems that distributors and festivals in the former Soviet countries share is the fact that big Russian distributors buy rights for the whole region and offer them prints dubbed in Russian. “Younger generations in our country do not necessarily speak Russian, and if we ask for a print with Georgian subtitles, they demand very high prices, up to €3,000, to make one," said Chkonia. "Meanwhile, they can give us a Russian-dubbed print for €700."

Asgarova, who has been trying to organise a festival in Baku for years and is hoping to finally realise it in 2019, said, "We prefer to work with Turkish distributors who are more open, and also it's a much more similar language to ours, so we are sometimes willing to use prints translated into Turkish."

As for programming itself, Soukmanov remarked that in Belarus, they are hoping to influence the industry with the kind of films they present. "There have been many changes in the Belarusian film industry in recent years, and this is also reflected in our programme and what the audiences want to see," said Soukmanov. "There is a new generation of independent filmmakers who are addressing political and social issues indirectly, presenting their common life on screen. One of these is Yulia Shatun's [FID Marseille award winner] Tomorrow, and as we believe that our programming helped inspire them, we continue to screen this kind of independent cinema," he continued. 

In Moldova, festivals and local industry are also developing together. "Between 1992 and 2010, there were almost no films made in Moldova," said Ciorbă. "Since 2010, some new filmmakers have started to emerge, and last year the state, with the help of the French and Romanian governments, established the national film centre. No one really knows yet how it's supposed to work, but we hope it's a step forward that will enable a wider variety of films to be made. 

"Most Moldovan films are dramas and deal with social issues, and at CRONOGRAF we try to screen all different kinds of cinema, as there is only one independent cinema in the whole country. When the festival ends, we go on a two-month tour throughout the country, screening the best films from the festival and talking to audiences – in a way, making a political statement." 

In Russia, Mansky's Artdocfest has been under a lot of political pressure, and this is why the team has decided to partly move it to Riga. "We are trying to keep the festival in Russia, and right now, we are doing everything we can to make it happen in December in Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg," explained Mansky. "But there is absolutely no guarantee – even if we sign all of the necessary documents, we sell all of the tickets and we do our advertising campaign – that we will actually be able to open the festival, and it is owing to reasons which have nothing to do with us. 

"Of course, we would like to show all of these films in Russia, but given the present situation, I understand that out of 21 films, we will maybe be able to screen ten at best," he lamented. "Even venues that we rent from institutions are causing us problems. They put such big obstacles in these agreements that we sign with them that I cannot show the films I want, so we will try with online screenings. We have already sold several dozen tickets in July for the December screening of Putin's Witnesses [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Vitaly Mansky
scheda film] for the closing of the festival."

As for the political aspect and the reasons why there were no Russian films screening at Odesa this year, Sinkevych said, "Of course, art is beyond politics in a way, but at the same time it is not. In a way, not showing Russian films in Odesa is a form of self-censorship because we will not screen obvious propaganda films. But my observation is that there are fewer and fewer independent Russian films – we don't get these movies as submissions, and I don't see them at international festivals."

Chkonya agreed and added, "Russian films are not the problem; the problem are the Russian distributors and industry, and the privileged position they have in the region. All of our cinemas are owned by the same person, who gets films from the Russian distributors. Therefore, people in Georgia still watch films dubbed in Russian. People are so used to seeing films in Russian that they are even a little bit scared to see films in their original language with subtitles, while the new generation does not speak Russian anyway. So there is a big gap in society."

The panel, which will be held for the second time at the Cottbus FF, also welcomed participants in the workshop for film journalists and bloggers from the Eastern Partnership countries and Russia. Seven participants from Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan were covering the OIFF's programme and industry events for their outlets, with the aim of raising awareness of the significance of film festivals for civil society and creating a powerful social impact in their respective nations.