The Nika, named after the Greek goddess of victory, is awarded in 15 categories, with the most significant being Best Feature Film, Best Film Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. Along with a gold statuette, the winner in each category will receive $1,000.
A relatively new tradition, the Nikas were inaugurated in 1988 by showman Yuly Gusman, a Duma deputy, along the lines of the Hollywood Oscars. The festivities, which are closed to the public, are expected to include six hours of bands, jokes and striptease, and will take place at the Central House of Cinema. They will be televised a week later, on Dec. 23 at 10 P.M. on the Russian Channel.
The following are nominees for Best Feature Film -- their directors are also the nominees for Best Director:
?The controversial drama "Children of the Cast Iron Gods," by the up-and-coming Hungarian filmmaker Tomash Tot, a graduate of the Moscow National Film School. A saga of an anti-hero, the film focuses on Ignat, a human cog in the wheels of a sprawling foundry city located somewhere in the desolate steppes. The workers in this industrial monster seem to be made of iron themselves. Trapped in their steel-gray lives, these 20th-century men make pathetic attempts to imitate the noble feats of the knights of Russian folk epics.
?"Makarov," by the master filmmaker Vladimir Khotinenko. The film tells of an intellectual -- a poet who purchases a gun. As the story progresses, the intellectual and his weapon become one, the message being that brutality kills the highest human values. "Makarov" is an indictment of post-Soviet society, specifically its slipping moral values, cultural decline and selfish individualism. The protagonist's surname, Makarov, is also the name of a Soviet gun so popular, that the word Makarov has become synonymous with "gun" in Russian slang.
Khotinenko, incidentally, is currently completing a drama, "The Moslem," about a young Russian soldier who converts to Islam while a POW in Afghanistan, drawing mockery from his native villagers in central Russia.
?"Window to Paris" by the charismatic St. Petersburg comedic virtuoso Yury Mamin. Here we have another intellectual, a kind schoolteacher. But instead of going ballistic, this intelligent manages to find a magic window in his communal apartment and steps through it right into Paris. The window is two-way. The adventures of the communal apartment residents in Paris, and of the Parisians in the post-Soviet paradise add exquisite charm to this tragi-comedy.
Among the Best Documentary nominees is the alternately hilarious and horrifying debut of National Film School graduate Artur Aristakisyan, whose film diary featuring Moldovan beggars won a $10,000 award in the San Francisco Film Festival. Other nominees include "House With Knights," a Russian-French production by experienced documentarist Marina Goldovskaya, "Vanished Without a Trace" by Tenghiz Semyonov, and "Farewell U.S.S.R. Part 1. Personal." by Alexander Rodnyansky.
Among candidates in the Best Scientific/Educational Film category is "Excerpts from the Next War," a montage film by Vitaly Mansky incorporating amateur footage shot by World War II soldiers -- both Russian and German.
Other nominees in the major categories are:
For Best Actor:
Alexander Zbruev in "You're My Only One"
Sergei Makovetsky in "Makarov"
Igor Sklyar in "A Dog's Year"
For Best Actress:
Ir?ne Jacob in "The Prediction"
Marina Neyolova in "You're My Only One"
Inna Churikova in "Casanova's Cloak"
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