The SPIMF festival is composed of eight different film sections hosted by leading Russian film critics and the GALA.CINEMA program consists of two gala premieres. Screenings will be held form 1 to 10 October in cinemas situated in Saint Petersburg’s beautiful historic city center.

Britannica

Sixteen
The Trip to Italy
What We Did on Our Holiday
Wreckers

Curators: Alexey Medvedev, Anastasiya Spirenkova

A cycle called «The Birth of a Nation» is dedicated to national cinemas that successfully compete with international blockbusters both inside and outside of their countries. First choice is Great Britain
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Kor-Kor

A Broad Bellflower
A State of Mind
Aim High in Ñreation
Centre Forward

Ñurator: Vasily Koretski

Kor-Kor was intended to invite Russian audience to view the life in DPRK from two aspects. The first section of the program includes documentaries about DPRK filmed by Western filmmakers. The second section features different films from DPRK. Shown together they will give Russian viewers the idea of the official side of life in DPRK — a Gesamtkunstwerk that cannot be divided into distinct form of art.
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Locarno Local

From What Is Before
Horse Money
La Sapienza
Socialism
White nights on the Pier

Curator: Boris Nelepo

Locarno International Film Festival is one of the oldest cinema venues in the world. It is impossible to bring to St. Petersburg neither Piazza Grande nor the wonderful Ex-Rex cinema, where 54 classic pictures by the Italian studio Titanus were shown this year. But, as Finnish filmmaker Peter von Bagh said, «Film screenings, like films themselves, are part of history — the seismograph of the era». We’ve selected very diverse films (including this year’s winner, From What Is Before by Lav Diaz) that reflect the richness of aesthetic priorities of the current festival headed by its new artistic director Carlo Chatrian.
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Mamentum

Clouds of Sils Maria
The New Girlfriend
Saint Laurent
Three hearts

Curator: Alexander Mamontov

Berlin in February. Cannes in March. Venice and Toronto in September. Then and there, the agenda of the modern cinema is formed; its crucial trends become clear; viewers’ demands and critics’ favours are shaped for the coming year. Our program includes four timeliest films of the current season that survived the trial of these leading world festivals.
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Non-Fiction

Bjork: Biophilia Live
Dior and I
For No Good Reason
Regarding Susan Sontag
The New York Review of Books: A 50 Year Argument

Curators: Alena Bocharova, Kirill Sorokin

Although cinema as such started with documentaries (at least, the Lumiere brothers’ cinema), when people hear our program’s name, Non-Fiction, they think of a book shelf. This involuntary association, we suspect, is the most accurate image that unites the films chosen for this year’s program.
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N-L-PO

Friendship’s Death
Invasion
Mercuriales
The 10th Victim
World on a Wire

Curator: Boris Nelepo

The year 2001, once filmed by Kubrick, is already in the past. We live now in the times that seemed unachievable to many directors. Are the films stale? By no means. Were they accurate in their prognosis? Often they were. Now is probably the best time for a sci-fi retrospective.
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Teen Spirit

Hide Your Smiling Faces
My Name Is Hmmm...
The Kings of Summer
The Pee-Wee 3D: The Winter That Changed My Life

Curator: Alexey Medvedev

If we had to describe these films with one word, that word would be «change». These stories tell of metamorphoses of inner worlds and external circumstances: children struggle with the indifference of adults, the cruelty of their peers, unresolved issues in their families, and their own fear to face life that demands effort and intension. The Teen Spirit films are stories of growing up told simply and humorously, and played with drive and risk appetite.
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Trofey

Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy
Power
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Bankers of God
Zero hour

Curator: Mikhail Trofimenkov

Jean-Luc Godard insisted that all movies were love stories. Of course, they are — but they are political stories as well. The point of this program is to check: does the political cinema still exist in the modern «global» world? Yes, it does. Does it keep to the traditions of its greatest period? The French are still true to the idea of «cinéma vérité», Italians still keep up the political thriller, the genre that brought them fame in 70s. Has it yielded to commercial demands? Naturally, it has.
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