The winners of the International Lendoc Film Festival have been announced, as reported by the Film Distributor’s Newsletter. The event concluded with a grand ceremony at Lendok Open Film Studio, where the feature film competition crowned its victor as Secret of a Little Night, directed by Natalia Meshchaninova. The non fiction category went to Vad’d for his work titled The Passions of Nikita Dobrynin, while the Best Director prize went to Taalaibek Kulmendev for House for sale hailing from the Kyrgyz Republic. A special diploma for the best visual solution was awarded to Adilet Karzhoev for the film Black Wagon. The Lendok Film Festival, founded by the studio bearing the same name, has been in operation since 2020 and opened to international competition in 2023. More than 200 entries were submitted from 12 countries, with 24 films participating in the competition in St. Petersburg, including 14 feature films and 10 narrative features that showcased at the event. The day before the awards, a moment of levity stirred the crowd when a presenter referred to the prize by placing a box on his head, an anecdote remembered by attendees. Earlier in the festival’s history, Chizhik-Pyzhik returns had already seen wide distribution and sparked renewed interest in regional cinema.
