There started Ninth International Mobile Film Festival VOKA Smartfilm

On 4 February there started ninth International mobile film VOKA Smartfilm festival. This year the event runs under the slogan The Season of (Un)usual Stories. Just as in previous seasons contenders of competitive program can select the theme and genre of their works on their own. There will be no genre nominations. There are only two binding criteria all entries must comply with, i.e. filming with a mobile camera and maximum total duration of 10 minutes. Applications for VOKA Smartfilm are accepted from 5 February till 21 March.

The festival is organized by A1 under support of Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus. “This year we have made up our mind to grant maximum freedom of choice to all VOKA Smartfilm contenders – in order to see and show truly interesting, unusual, and different from each other works to our audience. The authors will be able to decide what they feel bonded to: to see something unusual in the ordinary or to invent their own plot, model the reality and capture it. In our opinion, freedom of creative quest reflects uniqueness of the mobile films. And we hope that contenders from different countries will find it interesting to take advantage of this opportunity”, - commented Anton Bladik, Senior Director for Digital Platforms and Content.

The winners of VOKA Smartfilm festival will be selected by professional jury and will receive various smartphones models. While the best film of the competitive program will be awarded with Gran Prix of mobile film festival VOKA Smartfilm and cash prize of BYN 3000.

Professional jury to assess the entries consists of seven film experts. Film expert, director of Listapad feature film festival Igor Sukhmanov, film expert and critic Anton Sidorenko, coordinator of the National festival Listapad Nikolai Lavrenyuk, director of film festival Polar Glow Olga Chaikovskaya, producer Leonid Kalitenya, film critic and journalist Taras Tarnalitsky as well as director Anastasia Miroshnichenko.

In the new season VOKA Smartfilm will also continue it’s tradition: contenders will be assessed by a public jury too managed by script writer and director Vlada Senkova. VOKA Smartfilm public jury will be identified based on the results of a special test available for anyone.

Ninth season of VOKA Smartfilm festival also features a series of master classes. Special film screenings will become a part of the program too. One of them will take place in VOKA Cinema on 14 February and is dedicated to the Valentine’s Day.

VOKA Smartfilm will summarize its results on 16 April 2020. In the meanwhile, all developments can be tracked on the official portal www.smartfilm.by as well as via a special section of VOKA VOD. Archived broadcastings of the master classes and other actual information will be posted here too. Besides, visitors of the portal and VOKA users will be the first to watch the shortlisted works.

Applications for VOKA Smartfilm, registration for festival program, a film test for the membership in the public jury and all updates about the new season are available on the official page – www.smartfilm.by.