Clean sweep as women directors pick up documentary film awards

It was women’s hour at the ArtDocFest Documentary Film Festival in Moscow last night with four female directors walking away with all four awards. The main Grand Prix prize went to Alina Rudnitskaya, 37, for her film Blood, a vivid black-and-white film that follows a mobile blood bank team as they travel to remote corners of Russia collecting blood. With £17 paid for each donation, the documentary shows how important a source of income donating blood is for some Russians.

The award for the best feature length documentary went to The 16th Republic (Poslodni Limuzin), a directorial debut for 40-year-old Daria Khlestkina. The film is a farcical portrait of a team of ageing specialists at Moscow’s legendary ZiL car and truck factory, best known for producing limousines for Soviet leaders and Red Square military parades. Just as the factory was preparing to close, the Ministry of Defence placed an order for three new limousines in 2011. The factory finally closed this year.

Special jury prizes went to Inna Lesina for Morphology, a 30-minute profile of a pathologist, and Madina Mustafina, 26, for Come On, Scumbags about an 18-year-old transgender woman in Kazakhstan. The panel was made up of director Pavel Lungin, literary critic and cultural historian Irina Prokhorova and Musician Vasya Oblomov.

The festival also screened Putin’s Games, a controversial film detailing the corruption and failures of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Producer Simone Baumann was approached three times by Russian authorities, who offered £600,000 — double the film’s budget — not to show the film. Following the premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam at the end of November, the Moscow screening went ahead without any issues.