Russian documentary film festival to open in New York

The Russian Documentary Film Festival in New York opens in October with an award-winning programme of films that includes 24 US premieres. All the films being screened over the three-day festival have picked up awards at either Russian or international film festivals over the past year.

Among them is Born in the USSR: 28 Up, a documentary directed by Sergei Miroshnichenko and narrated by British actor James McAvoy. The documentary is the fourth in a series of films that follows a group of eight people who grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Each has been filmed at seven-year intervals with the latest taking place in 2012 when the protagonists were 28 years old. The second in the series, 14 Up Born in the USSR (1998), picked up an Emmy in 1999 for best documentary.

Other notable films to be screened include The Tundra Book. A Take of Vukvukai, The Little Rock about the harshness of life in the Arctic Circle, and Odd Winged Angel, a biopic of surrealist Russian painter, set designer and costume designer Pavel Tchelitchew.

The festival will take place at various cinemas across the city and will run from 4 to 6 October.