ACCEPTANCE SPEECH
Aleksandr Sokurov
Dear friends, I know that some of the guests of this ceremony came here especially just for tonight. I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart for this beautiful prize, for your labor of understanding. It is a great honor for me to receive a prize awarded to me by the diplomats of the world. It is especially important for me, as I am a citizen of Russia. As I understand it, these days the attitude to Russia around the world is not as good as I would like it to be. I would like you to love Russia and believe in Russia as much as you love the film and believe in it. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart once again. I do regret that Galina Vishnevskaya could not come here, it’s a coincidence that today she was transferring her collection of her works of art to the state of Russia and was requested to be there in the presence of the President of Russia. I would like to share this prize with all my crew and with my personal friend: producer and composer Andrey Sigle- please come up.
Andrei Sigle
Thank you very much for the efforts you made to watch this film. I know that not many people in Russia have seen it. This film is quite complex to understand and also it is quite painful for people in Russia to deal with these events which are so recent. But this award shows that our film is accepted and understood not only in Russia but in other parts of the world. I would like us to somehow bring the politics of Russia, and life and art of Russia, in line with the politics and life of Europe and the rest of the world. Thank you very much once again.