Student of St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television Wins Award at Zolotoy Vityaz (Golden Knight) XXX International Film Festival

‘A Farewell Bell’, a film by Vyacheslav Belomestnykh (workhop of Artyom Antonov) received the main prize in ‘Debut and Student Films’ category.

Zolotoy Vityaz (Golden Knight) is an International Film Forum, a Russian Orthodox film festival. The history of the festival starts in 1992. In 2021, the festival united cinema, theatre, music, literature and visual art, and since then, it has been organized as a part of the Slavic Art Forum of the same name.  The festival slogan is ‘For Moral Ideals. For Elevation of Human Soul’. Every year student and debut films are submitted to the festival special nomination. This year a student of our University won the prize in this nomination.

‘A Farewell Bell’ is a story of two school graduates, Anya and Sasha, they live peacefully in their small town. While organising a farewell graduation ceremony, Anya gets to know that Sasha, whose dream is to become an architect, won a grant to study in a big city. Will Sasha leave the hometown to fulfill his dreams or stay with his loved one? Vyacheslav raises the question of choice that we are all familiar with, and he is looking for an answer together with his characters.

Artyom Antonov, Vyacheslav’s master, congratulated his student and mentioned that Vyacheslav was seriously working on his film and it resulted in the film’s bright festival life.

I am very happy for Slava (Vyacheslav) and his successes! It is not the first award of this film and Slava really deserves it. The film ironic and dramatic, it is a film about coming of age. Slava’s talent is working carefully with his actors, his scrupulous work with the material to understand and reflect the thoughts and the emotions of the characters. Now Slava is dubbing his second film – ‘Meeting’ after a short story by ]a Russian writer[ Valentin Rasputin, and I hope that this film will have a successful festival life too!

While talking about his film, Vyacheslav says most people have experience of splitting up with their first love. This is the first step to an adult life people should make to move further into the future. The director thanked his film crew and the festival for an opportunity to show his film to a wide audience:

It is difficult to describe the impressions when you get an award of such a high level for your first film. It is a happy feeling because my team and me, we worked so long and we won. It is a status for the film. It is not a course univetsity work anymore, it is a film that many people has watched. For us, the creators, it is very important that as many people see the film as possible, because it is a sign how deeply the film touches the hearts. I would like to thank ‘Zolotoy vityaz’ (Golden Knight) festival for an opportunity to show the film not only in St. Petersburg. This is very important for us!

The film crew: Director of Photography: Dmitry Silnitsky (workshop of Dmitry Dolinin and Igor Naumov), Sound Designer: Semyon Dmitriev (workshop of Viktor Dinov), Producer: Anastasia Konkova. 

Our University congratulates Vyacheslav and his team and wishes them further successes and bright vistories!