Kirill Serebrennikov

If we talk about great authors of world cinema, then Parajanov certainly stands among them. Parajanov is an artist, a poet who addresses the audience, not in the usual narrative way, but through visual forms and images. These images are always striking, emotional, significant and paradoxical. In many ways, it’s the absolute visual film. An explosion of color, an explosion of fantasy and images that burn into us, forever. The list of films Parajanov couldn’t shoot is unjustly longer than the list of those he could. In the last few years, many books and articles have been published featuring his unknown, forbidden or lost scripts, with explanations. There’s a whole community of Parajanov fans and connoisseurs. Bit by bit, they collect the artifacts from Parajanov’s world: collages, apocryphal documents, drawings, letters. Next year is Parajanov’s centenary, and, of course, nowadays all this is just as important as his completed famous films.

My favorite Parajanov film, The Color of Pomegranates, was previously shown at the festival. So this year we’ll see The Legend of the Suram Fortress - a film that says that all beauty calls for cruelty, and often blood and human sacrifice.

Sergei Parajanov’s whole life was a sacrifice meant to make the world more beautiful.