MINSK, 31 August (BelTA) - The feature film Crystal Swan by Belarusian director Darya Zhuk that Belarus will nominate for the Oscar Academy Award has been included into the program of the BFI London Film Festival, BelTA has learned.
The debut full-length work of the Belarusian filmmaker will be shown out of competition on 14 October. This is a very prestigious festival which is held under the patronage of the British Film Institute, Darya Zhuk noted.
BFI London Film Festival will be running from 10 to 21 October. The festival shows the works of both well-established and aspiring filmmakers. It attracts about 300 works from more than 50 countries every year.
Crystal Swan was premiered in Minsk on 29 August and hit the big screen in Belarus on 30 August. The film will be shown in more than 20 cities across the country.
Crystal Swan is a coming-of-age story about a young woman in post-soviet Belarus in the mid 1990s. She loves house music and dreams of going to Chicago where this music style emerged a decade earlier. To get a visa to America, she fakes her visa application by buying a letter of employment on the black market and instead of America the heroine ends up by the phone in a small town waiting for the US embassy to call.
Crystal Swan was featured in the East of the West program and opened the competition program at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). In July the movie won the Grand Prix of the Odessa International Film Festival and in August won two prizes in the Co-Production. Window to the World competition at the Window to Europe film festival in Vyborg, Russia. Darya Zhuk's movie has been invited to more than 20 film festivals around the world.
Belarus will send the official nomination to the Oscar Academy Award together with the film distribution certificate running from 30 August till 1 October. According to th eacademy rules, each country has the right to nominate one motion picture which must be first released in the country submitting it no earlier than 1 October of a previous year and no later than 30 September of a current year and be first publicly exhibited for at least seven consecutive
days in a commercial motion picture theater for the profit of the producer and exhibitor.
