“THE MONK AND THE DEMON” WINS KIEV ORTHODOX FILM FESTIVAL

The winner of the grand prize of this year’s fourteenth “Pokrov” (“Protection”) Kiev Orthodox Film Festival is the film by Russian director Nikolai Dostal “The Monk and the Demon,” reports the film festival’s officialwebsite.Fifty-six animation, documentary and feature films from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia and Poland were contenders for the festival’s highest awards. The jury that chose the winners was composed of film directors, screenwriters, producers, actors and priests.

The festival’s motto this year was taken from the Epistle of Apostle James: Faith without works is dead (James 2:26).

In the film “The Monk and the Demon,” based on the script of Yuri Arabov, a new monk named Ivan Semyonovich Shaposhnikov shows up at a monastery. But together with him, a demon by the name of Legion (as it introduced itself to Ivan) makes its home at the monastery. Legion chose Ivan as the object of his diabolical work, tempting him in every possible way to knock him from his chosen path of service to God. But the stronger the temptation the stronger the monk’s spiritual strength. Georgy Fetisov and Timofei Tribuntsev played the lead roles. The movie’s budget was 120 million rubles, of which fifty million rubles were allocated by the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Culture.