On September 4-8 at the XXII Kazan International Altyn Minbar Film Festival, the audience will see the world’s best films at two venues: Korston Cinema and Mir Cinema, where the organizers compiled several non-competition programs, one of which is the Islamic World in the Youth Cinema.

The current festival accepted 1030 submissions from 67 countries. The greater part of submissions are short films, the number of which is 495. According to Nina Kochelyaeva, the program director of the festival, young filmmakers tend to make short films that acquire less money. Meanwhile, the films submitted by young filmmakers are professional, vivid, and deep ones.

The non-competition program was comprised of 14 films, according to Kazan’s status as a cultural capital of the Islamic world. It includes the best films from which the audience will learn the issues interesting young filmmakers, their values, the principles on which they base their lives, and how they imagine the present and the future.

A young cinema of the Sultanate of Oman is presented by Flaming Souls by Yaqoob Mahfoodh Alkhanjari. This is a poignant story in which the good and the evil, personal experience and empathy are twisted. The film narrates a life full of obstacles and unfair challenges, which finally cost the main character’s life.

Felix Bach's film Goodbye My Dove explores the theme of war in Northern Vietnam, where many families were split up due to evacuation. The main character of the film, Lock, does all his best to escape to Hanoi with his sister and reunite with the family.

An Iranian filmmaker, Ghazal Zoghiniya in his film Narmook, tells about Malalai, a girl who, in accordance with tradition, was dressed as a boy in her childhood. Once she reaches adulthood, she is expected to return to fulfilling the stereotypical female role. But instead of beautiful fabrics and makeup, she prefers freedom and the right to determine her destiny.

And a different moral choice is to be made by the character of Revenge taste by the Chechen filmmaker Rasoul Kurumov. This is a story of a complicated world of human emotions. The plot dwells on the viewer in the world where each decision has its consequences, and the temptation of revenge can become a determinative factor in a human’s fate.

Family relationships are the concern of Kyrgyzstani filmmaker Ainusku Asanbekova. In her short story Father's Daughter, the heroine, after many years of separation, wants to reunite with her father, whom she was close to as a child. Totally different relationships are seen in the Iranian film Too Far Too Late by Reza Daghagh. Within a short car ride, a son needs to tell his father some unexpected news. But their long-term controversies and hidden reminiscences delay the moment when love and honesty will become inseparable.

In the Uzbek film Love Me by Eldor Kudratillayev, a boy from kishlak (village) named Dodboy is dreaming of celebrated beauties. When he sees an unknown beautiful girl, he becomes completely infatuated with her and forgets his girlfriend. The film explores the contradiction between fantasies and true feelings.

In his film Beteu The Stitched Amulet, Bashkortostani filmmaker Ruslan Yultaev tells a story of an old lady who did not want to let her grandson go to military service and took his family amulet, Beteu. Having realized her mistake, she tries to send it with humanitarian aid, but it turns out to be complicated. At the IX International Festival of Visual Arts of the Finno-Ugric Peoples “TUIVEZH” the film was awarded as the “Best Film for the Year of Defender of Motherland.”

Also, the Islamic World in the Youth Cinema program within Altyn Minbar includes films like Saffian Boots by Dilia Suleymanova, Mom by Ivan Sosnin, Iraq Film Attention by Mohammed Odeh Al-Khafaji, The Hearse by Ahmed Alnasser (Saudi Arabia), The City Under the Mandarin Tree by Amir Gholami (Iran–Iraq), and the Turkish film Life Goes On, a debut by Hümam Özkara.

Non-competition screenings of the Altyn Minbar Film Festival will take place at Mir Cinema on September 4-8, 2026. The schedule is available at the websites: https://kazan-mfmk.com/ and https://kinoteatr-mir.ru/.