According to the information received at the Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation, the Prize, founded in 1997, had been awarded to filmmakers for the first time this year.
Director Vladimir Bortko received this prestigious award for "an inspired screen interpretation of Dostoyevsky's novel "Idiot" that had received a popular response and reunited the contemporary reader with Russian classical literature".
Evgenii Mironov, a popular actor who had played the main part in the film, received the prize for "the creation of a sincere screen image of Prince Myshkin's character, giving a new impulse to the understanding of Christian values promoted by Russian literary classics".
Earlier the Solzhenitsyn Prise had been awarded to prominent writers like Valentin Raspution and Evgenii Nosov.
The Solzhenitsyn Prize is awarded annually for works belonging to various genres of literature; it has an amount of $ 25 thousand.
The Prize is financed by the Russian Public Alexander Solzhenitsyn Foundation, created in 1974. As we know, all royalties for all editions of the "GULAG Archipelago" are transferred to that Foundation.
The "Idiot" TV series was a big event in the Russian cinema in 2003. This screening of Dostoyevsky's novel was unique, among other things, due to its all-stars cast, which guaranteed the film's unquestionable success.
