Luc Besson is to head this year's Moscow International Film Festival's jury, the president of the film marathon Nikita Mikhalkov revealed on Monday.
A big name in the contemporary film industry, Besson is the director behind such movies as "Leon", "The Fifth Element", "Angel-A", "Nikita" and many others.
The festival will open on June 17 and run through to June 26. According to the festival's press service, the selective committee will choose from around a thousand feature and documentary entries.
Among the directors who have agreed to present their films at the festival are Aleksey Popogrebsky, Boris Khlebnikov, Pyotr Buslov, Nikolay Khomeriki, Aleksey Mizgirev, Andrey Proshkin, Kirill Serebrennikov, Katya Shagalova and Vasily Sigarev.
Along with the new productions, the Festival will display restored masterpieces by Italian film director Sergio Leone and will hold a number of events dedicated to the Russia-France cross-cultural year.
The jury of the previous Moscow Film Festival, the 31st, was headed by Pavel Lungin, the director of “Tsar”.