Gleb Panfilov's film "Ivan Denisovich" was awarded the 44th International Film Festival Efebo d'Oro ("Golden Ephebe") in Palermo, Italy.

The picture was presented in the competition of films based on literary works.

In the world box office, it was released under the name "100 minutes".

“Movies are stories, cinema is something else, it's how you tell stories.

Panfilov is a master of cinema, he filmed only the essentials.

The film, based on the story of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", carries eternal poetry in which suffering, freedom and humanity intersect, ”RIA Novosti film festival jury quotes.

The main role was played by Philip Yankovsky.

Also involved in the film are Inna Churikova, Artur Beschastny, Igor Savochkin, Denis Karasyov.

Leonid Yarmolnik acted as a narrator.

The director and actors were not present at the event in Palermo.

According to producer Maxim Panfilov, the director's brother, the organizers invited filmmakers, but they did not go because of the difficult route.

“It's hard to get there.

If we had gone, we might have been still in flight, so we limited ourselves to a video message from the director, ”the producer said in an interview with RT.

He added that while there is a trend in the West to abolish Russian culture, it probably "does not work on the island of Sicily, where the festival took place."

Gleb Panfilov expressed his gratitude in a video message and noted that this award was a holiday that came as a surprise to him.

“It is a pity that autumn.

It is a pity that the world has become more complicated and has become more severe.

But perhaps that is why I feel this news so keenly, which is wonderful for me,” said Gleb Panfilov.

The director also expressed the hope that the picture will arouse interest among Russian viewers.

It was at the box office in the fall of 2021, but then it was not very popular.

“For a producer, awards at festivals mean that the film excited the jury and the audience, that the film lives its own separate life - after all, it was made in the summer of 2021, it was at the box office in Russia, modest, but it was, the topic is not sugar,” Maxim Panfilov also reminded .

The producer was also surprised by the success of the picture in Italy - he emphasized that, although the original source is familiar to many, the tape is still a different work.

“Indeed, our film was made based on the world-famous story by Alexander Solzhenitsyn “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”.

But the film is an independent work of art, made by the classic of cinema Gleb Panfilov with the excellent work of Philip Yankovsky in the role of Ivan Denisovich - a modest and courageous man, a war hero who overcame all the trials that fell to his lot, ”says the cinematographer.

  • © Shot from the film "Ivan Denisovich"

The plot of the film revolves around a soldier Ivan Shukhov, who is captured by the Nazis.

Miraculously escaping, Shukhov returns to his homeland, where he is charged with espionage.

He is sentenced to ten years of hard labor and sent to one of the Gulag camps.

Shukhov is serving time there along with thousands of other prisoners.

Inspired by the classic Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the film expands the cinematic space with a story about a Soviet labor camp.

Foreign critics note that the director endowed the hero with a biography and shrouded his life in mysticism, which is able to support a person in the most difficult moments.

Having diluted the work with new details about Shukhov's life, the cinematographer strengthened the religious motif that takes place in the story itself.

Exploring the fate of thousands of Soviet soldiers who fought the Nazis and ended up as prisoners of war in German camps, Panfilov shows what exactly gave them the strength to hold on.

The leitmotif of "Ivan Denisovich" is the theme of the unbending human spirit.

Emanuele Sacchi, a reviewer for the MYmovies.it portal, noted that Panfilov's goal is to highlight how the strictness and discipline of the military environment tend to nullify the personalities of prisoners: Ivan Denisovich gets stuck in a perverted mechanism that draws him into the deepest depression, but unshakable faith in God, to which the hero comes, gives him hope to reunite with his family.

Fabio Fulfaro of Sentieri Selvaggi praises the director for his writing style.

Panfilov's film, he says, establishes a clear parallel between the will to survive and the search for spirituality.

Departing from the crude realism and political invective of Solzhenitsyn's novel, the director works on the suffering face of Ivan Denisovich and turns it into a tragic mask on the way to the endless way of the cross.

In the darkness and cold of the Gulag at the end of the world, Ivan rediscovers that "glimpse of humanity that no photograph will ever catch."

The film had its world premiere at the 74th Locarno Film Festival in 2021.

Filipp Yankovsky was awarded the prize of international independent film critics.

At the beginning of 2022, Gleb Panfilov received the Golden Eagle award for directing, and Yankovsky for the male role.