The Message to Man Film Festival selected a number of short films from the British Council's promotion scheme to screen at the festival in St Petersburg.

Among the British films selected for the festival was Hibernation, pictured above, (directed by John William) which has been collecting a steady stream of awards over the past year, including Best Short Film at the Zagreb Film Festival and the Best Britsh Short Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. The trend continued at Message to Man with Hibernation being awarded the Special prize of the Graduate School of Scriptwriters and Film directors (Moscow, Russia) 'For a bright personal way, unusual quests in the field of cinema language, and high morality'.

The other short films selected were At the End of the Sentence (Marisa Zanotti), The Intimacy of Strangers (Eva Weber), The True Story of Sawney Beane (Elizabeth Hobbs) and The Bomb with a Man in His Shoe (Ben Rivers). The True Story of Sawney Beane won the 'Centaur' Prize for the best animation film.

Also screening at the festival was the feature length documentary Sisters in Law, (pictured upper left) jointly directed by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi, which won 'The Golden Centaur' Grand-Prix at the festival. Sisters in Law follows the work of State Prosecutor Vera Ngassa and Court President Beatrice Ntuba as they despense justice and humour in a Cameroon courtroom.

The Message to Man Film Festival first started as a biennial event in the late eighties and was known as International Non-Feature Film Festival and was run but the State Committee of Cinematography of the USSR. Short features and animations have been included in the festival since 1994.