Freundlikh, Mikhalkov, Nemolyaeva, Bikovic, Garmash and Zakharova at the secular prize

At the award ceremony “Diamond Butterfly” Alice Freundlich was awarded an honorary prize for her contribution to world cinema – the statuette was given to her by Nikita Mikhalkov. In the hall were also Svetlana Nemolyaeva, Milos Bikovic and Sergey Garmash. Among the guests was Irina Apeksimova: on stage, she admitted that in her entire career she had not received a single cinematic prize, and it seems that she understood why it happened only today - so that she herself went out and presented the award to someone else. Milos Bikovic also went up to the stage for the presentation: he joked that, accepting the invitation, he thought that the prize would be awarded to him, and in the end he handed the award to the Serbian actress. Among the guests of honor was Maria Zakharova – she announced the winner in the nomination “Best composer” and promised to transfer the award to India through diplomatic channels. Margarita Simonyan presented the prize to Iranian director Alireza Motamedi for best screenplay. Before the release, she recalled the words of her late husband, director Tigran Keosayan: “You can make a bad movie from a good script, but you can’t make a good movie from a bad script.” Simonyan also noted that if she knew in advance who would win, she would wear something more modest - she was wearing a tight-fitting dress.