A doc­u­ment­ary film by Aleksnader Gut­man “17^th of August”, pro­duced by Eureka Media, has been qual­i­fied for the con­test of the Film Cri­tique Week dur­ing the 62^nd Film Fest­ival in Loc­arno. The world premiere is sched­uled for 12 August. 

The films tells a story of a one day from the life of a Rus­sian pris­oner, sen­tenced for triple murder and doing his time in a severe prison, loc­ated on an island between Wolo­goda and Archan­gielsk. The prison used to be a 17^th cen­tury mon­as­tery. The cam­era watches not only the prisoner’s chores. It con­cen­trates on his incess­ant reflec­tions what he had man­aged to do before comit­ting his crime, and what he had not done. The film also shows his pray­ers and cov­er­sa­tions with God, and remin­is­cing about events which used to seem quite ordin­ary, but now they seem dis­tant and unreal. 

The film’s pro­du­cers are Aleksander Gut­man and Krzysztof Kop­czyński. The doc­u­ment­ary was made within the frame of cop­ro­duc­tion by Atelier-​Film Alex­andr (Sankt Peters­burg), Eureka Media(Warsaw) and the Pol­ish Tele­vi­sion (TVP Chan­nel 1). It was fin­anced by: YLEISRADIO(Finland), Doc­u­ment­ary Film Stu­dio in Sankt Peters­burgh, Rus­sian Cul­ture and Art Fund of the Rus­sian Federation’s Min­istry of Culture.

The Film Cri­tique Week’s award is the only one awar­ded for doc­u­ment­ary film dur­ing the Film Fest­ival in Loc­arno, one of the most import­ant fest­ivals of the world. In 2008 the award was given to the dir­ector Beata Dzi­anow­icz and the pro­du­cer Krzysztof Kop­czyński for the film “Kites”.