Anna Melikian wins main prize at Kinotavr film festival

Armenian-Russian director Anna Melikian won the main prize at the Kinotavr Festival in Sochi on Sunday for her film About Love. The annual festival, now in its 26th year, is the most prestigious in the Russian film calendar. Melikian was following on from her success at last year’s Kinotavr where she won the best director prize for Star (2014).

About Love consists of five separate stories held together by a single lecture about love, read by Renata Litvinova’s character. Other major Russian movie stars in the film include Vladimir Mashkov, Evgeny Tsyganov, Mikhail Efremov, Maria Shalaeva, Ravshan Kurkov, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Aleksei Filimonov and Julia Snigir. Anna Melikian was born in Baku in 1976 and moved to Yerevan in 1988 before relocating to Moscow five years later to study at the All-Russian State University of Cinematography under Sergei Solovyov.

Other notable winners this year were Aleksey Fedorchenko, who won best director for his film Angels of Revolution, Polina Grishina, who won best actress for her work in Salvation, and an ensemble of Vasiliy Butkevitch, Aleksandr Pal, Pavel Chinarev and Ivan Yankovsky who won the best actor prize for their performances in Cloth Union.