The recently announced winners of two domestic film prizes differ quite substantially If someone who is not fully familiar with the current situation in the Russian cinema looks at the results of two important domestic film prizes handed out last week, that person is likely to be quite confused. The winners of the White Elephant, the prize awarded by the domestic film critic guild, and the Golden Eagle, which competes for the status of the "Russian Oscar" with the Nika prize, differ so much that an outsider would really be at a loss: how is it possible to make such different picks, choosing from the same assortment of movies?

True, the tastes of the film critic guild and the Golden Eagle jury seem to be totally different. The main winner of the White Elephant, Alexei Balabanov's Gruz 200 ("Cargo 200") was ignored by the other prize, while Nikita Mikhalkov's 12, which won 16 Golden Eagles, didn't seem to interest the film critics.

Overall, the situation with film prizes in Russia in the last few years has been quite odd. There have been too many cases of "surprise winners" and handing out major prizes to movies that hardly deserved them. The competition between the Golden Eagle, which was created in 2002, and Nika, has also raised controversy a couple of times.

The Golden Eagle has been traditionally associated with Mikhalkov, and the fact that his most recent film, a remake of Sydney Lumet's 1957 12 Angry Men, nominated for the best foreign language film Oscar, was the main winner, didn't surprise anyone. The prize has again confirmed its reputation of being not only very conservative, but also awarded to and by a particular group of filmmakers, with an outsider rarely getting a piece of the cake.

The only movie that has been able to make the winner list of both prizes, was Alexei Popogrebsky's Prostye veshchi (Simple Things), awarded a Golden Eagle for the best screenplay and White Elephants for the best actor and the best supporting actor by the film critic guild. This movie, which won the main prize at last year's domestic film festival Kinotavr, was sincere, reminiscent of some good late Soviet-time pictures and far from any experiment or controversy, pleasing just about anyone in a situation when few good movies are made in the country.

Still, many, including the film critic guild, would like to see something more controversial and experimental, like Gruz 200, a gruesome and noir story about the last years of the Soviet Union. Although some critics probably when too far, pronouncing the film as Balabanov's best movie, as well as the year's best one as soon as it was released last summer, it is certainly an important film.

There are things in it that are debatable, but still that was one of those movies which say something new and move the national film industry forward. And the White Elephant for the best movie comes as a late sign of the film's recognition. Cargo 200 won no major prizes at Kinotavr, and even the film critics prize at the festival, which it was supposed to receive, was at the last moment "divided," to be awarded to Simple Things as well. That caused a major row, and many believed that the festival's jury was just afraid to award that important prize to such a controversial film as Cargo 200.

What do the Golden Eagle and White Elephant winner lists prove? Unfortunately, Russia still doesn't have a film prize that would be in any way equivalent to the Oscar. We do have a critics' prize, which is more or less objective, but certainly inclined more towards highbrow cinema - as critics should be, of course, - and no prize that would more or less objectively reflect the general situation in the domestic film industry.

By Vladimir Kozlov