IDS’s first International Dostoevsky Video Competition was held in honor of the Bicentennial of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky’s birth, the 150^th anniversary of the novel Demons (Devils or The Possessed), the 50^th anniversary of The International Dostoevsky Society, and the XVIII International Dostoevsky Symposium, held in Nagoya, Japan in August 2023.

The inaugural competition was entitled “5-Minute Demons.” Conceived as a novel experiment, we truly did not know what to expect and were astonished by the results. Eight films from 6 countries – including China, the United States, Germany, Russia, Brazil, and Bulgaria – were submitted for consideration by amateur filmmakers (some of whom belonged to student collectives). The jury was impressed by the professional conceptual and technical quality of the films, all of which offered original interpretations of motifs from Demons. The Grand Prize winner was Les Gents by Dmytro Memari Fard (Dresden, Germany); the film was a striking representation of Kirillov’s suicide. Our jury also selected two finalists, which included the theatrical Matryosha’s Song by Ivan Dobchev, Dimitar Sardzhev, and Kiril Prodanov (Sofia, Bulgaria), and the rhythmic Buktreyler «Besy» by Anna Dubrovina and Anastasiia Zhurba (Barnaul, Russia).

All of the films submitted for consideration remain available on our open-access IDS YouTube Channel.