“The Mirage of Love” among favorites of New Movie Festival in Smolensk

Three awards out of eight were won by the movie „The Mirage of Love” by the Moldovan director Veleriu Jereghi, at the International Euro-Asian Festival „The New Movie. 21st century” organized in Smolensk, Russia. The production was nominated at other 4 categories. As part of the festival 116 movies competed, representing CIS and Baltic states. Valeriu Jereghi told Info-Prim Neo that “The Mirage of Love” was nominated at the “Grand Prix”, “the best directing”, “the best male performance”, “the best screenplay” categories. Out of the 8 existent prizes at the festival, “The Mirage of Love” received 3 – for the screenplay, for image and that of the spectator’s sympathy. The director says that the short version of the movie was presented at the competition, the producer’s version. The audience, most of them cinema-men, journalists, guests from different countries, solicited a repeated demonstration of the movie, but this time the original version of the director. As Jereghi stated, many participants expressed their regrets that the jury presented only the abridged version. According to Itar-Tass the great majority of the participant movies’ projection at the Smolensk Festival took place with packed house, the showing of the productions being often interrupted by applauses. “Some movies had such great success that they were shown several times, which is also the case of “The Mirage of Love” by the Moldovan director Valeriu Jereghi” the Russian press writes. The same source asserts that the competition was marked by some movies as those directed by Аndres Puipa (Lithuania), Peter Simm (Estonia), Zulifikar Musakov (Uzbekistan), Valeriu Jereghi (Моldova), as well as by several premieres of Russian movie-makers.