Rialto Channel has announced that acclaimed film Russian Snark will screen on Saturday June 1st, 2013 as part of the NZ Film Month they are curating.  Screening time is 8:30pm – so get your popcorn ready peeps!

Very exciting! Russian Snark screens at Cannes Cinephiles on Friday 18 May at 21H at the Cinema Le Raimu. Other NZ films screening are The Orator and Love Birds – check em out if you missed them in NZ! Wish we could be there!

Nadia on the Rock - Russian Snark

Address : Le Raimu : Parc de Ranguin MJC, 06400 Cannes La Bocca http://www.cannes-cinema.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=79&Itemid=101

January 24th we screened our baby to a Parisian audience. Luckily we had a superb French subtitles version by the lovely Raphaelle, and the audience totally got it.  Laughter throughout and lots of applause at the end were a wonderful intro for me as I went into the Q & A which lasted about 40 minutes.  I got into my French stride and and managed to parlez Francais throughout!  Lots of fun to be sure!  Thanks so much to Bernard Bories from the Cinema Anitpodes and the Australian Embassy for the venue and the NZ Embassy for the NZ wine, and also to a great audience!

Russian Snark gets a screening in Paris at the Australian Embassy on the 24th January and then I head to Rotterdam for the Producers Lab with Stephen’s next film Distant Fires – under my arm!
Rotterdam Lab: 78 producers going Dutch

http://www.wiftnz.org.nz/news/2011/11/15/kiwi-snark-wins-best-film-in-brussels.aspx

NZ feature film Russian Snark has won the top prize at the 38th International Festival of Independent Film in Brussels. The award is doubly thrilling for writer/director Stephen Sinclair and producer Liz DiFiore (congratulations to WIFT member Liz) because the film was only invited to screen in competition at the festival two weeks ago. The late inclusion was thanks to a glowing recommendation from Bernard Bories, director of the St Tropez Film Festival, whereRussian Snark screened in mid-October.
Two other NZ features - Matariki and Predicament - screened in competition at the Belgium fest, with a third - My Wedding and Other Secrets - screening outside the competition.
Also playing at the festival were five NZ shorts: Blue, Ebony Society, Hauraki, Munted, andPreferably Blue.
Russian Snark, which enjoyed a critically acclaimed NZ cinema release earlier this year, has just been released on DVD.

Our film Russian Snark has just won the Grand Jury Prize at the Brussels Independent Film Festival! I think a certain amount of chest thumping and panty waving is in order; our little micro-budget confection vanquished quite a number of multi-million dollar monoliths to claim this one. We’re the little engine that could.

http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/film/4560/russian-snark-a-film-by-stephen-sinclair-vm-dvd/

Although it would perhaps be possible to write the plot outline of this modest but quietly impressive feature on a very small piece of paper, the protagonists here and a few of the marginal characters bring such insightful portrayals that it keeps attention for all its 80 minutes.

First time feature director and writer Sinclair — who co-wrote Ladies Night, worked with Peter Jackson and has previously only directed short films — get a note-perfect performance out of Stephens Papps as Misha, a once-acclaimed Russian film director, who arrives in New Zealand in the late Nineties with his wife-cum-muse Nadia (Elena Stejko) in a tiny lifeboat. They are determined to seek a new life and a country more sympathetic to his artistic ideals.

As a film-maker — and we see some of his intended work intercut with the main story — Misha is pretentious, intellectual, singular in his vision and supported by the loving and long-suffering Nadia.

It gives nothing away to say Misha’s dreams are quickly eroded and that Nadia finally cracks at the thought of having to support his self-belief yet again.

The story is less in the narrative than in the way it is told, through those small but accumulating blows which can be debilitating, and the conflict between an intellectual inner world and the rather more unforgiving or indifferent reality in which the couple find themselves.

There are numerous scenes where everything is said in an expression or sideways glance, and Papps masters Misha’s stoic and stubborn persona as a man of few words but grand visions.

That redemption of a kind takes place in the context of loving, funny, generous but also slightly troubled Pacific family does seem a little bit of local cliche, but Stephanie Tauevihi as Roseanna (especially in her interaction with her “children”) brings a ring of understated truth and naturalism to the character.

Misha is a dreamer — and an unsympathetic and irritating one at that — but as his frailties are revealed, to himself and the viewer, he becomes more a figure to be supported and helped than ostracised or condemned by indifference.

Russian Snark — on DVD with no extras — was nominated for official inclusion in a number of international film festivals in 2010 and picked up best international film at the Garden State Film Festival.

The ending may suggest some new awakening and insight, but the getting there — like opening a series of Russian dolls — is worth the journey for the characters and viewer alike. – Graham Reid

http://www.onfilm.co.nz/2011/11/10/russian-snark-wins-best-film-in-brussels/

NZ feature film Russian Snark has won the top prize at the 38th International Festival of Independent Film in Brussels.

The award is doubly thrilling for writer/director Stephen Sinclair and producer Liz DiFiore because the film was only invited to screen in competition at the festival two weeks ago. The late inclusion was thanks to a glowing recommendation from Bernard Bories, director of the St Tropez Film Festival, where Russian Snark screened in mid-October.

Two other NZ features – Matariki and Predicament – screened in competition at the Belgium fest, with a third – My Wedding and Other Secrets – screening outside the competition.

Matariki won two awards – Best Director for Michael Bennett and Best Actor for Iaheto Ah Hi.

Also playing at the festival were five NZ shorts: Blue, Ebony Society, Hauraki, Munted, and Preferably Blue.

The prizes for the Kiwi filmmakers were collected on their behalf by UK-based NZ actress Celeste Wong, who appears in My Wedding and Other Secrets and was an official guest of the festival.

Russian Snark, which enjoyed a critically acclaimed NZ cinema release earlier this year, has just been released on DVD.

http://www.universcine.be/fr/articles/38eme-festival-international-du-film-independant-de-bruxelles-le-palmares