Sevastopol is the city of pan-European military history. Here historical memory and national interests of many countries of the world crosses. Sevastopol is the cradle of Orthodoxy, and one of the most powerful enclaves of Russian culture.

Sevastopol is one of the largest educational and cultural centers in Ukraine. In the city there are more than 30 universities. Each year over one million guests visits Sevastopol, and most of them are young people.

Finally, Sevastopol and the Crimea altogether are a large movie set for filmmakers from different countries. Every year over 30 films are shot in the territory of the peninsular.

The official programme of the “War and Peace” Festival will bring together contemporary cinema, dedicated to humanitarian problems in the hot spots in the world, military-history movies and documentary films. The emphasis will be made on the moral and spiritual education of the younger generation.

Why the film festival is also important is that it aims to encourage novice filmmakers and to create a single information field with countries — Ukraine's neighbors in the near abroad. The representative film festival in Sevastopol would be an important step for the development of good neighborly relations between countries with shared history. This cultural dialogue should also strengthen economic and political stability. International film festival involves trust, open format of communication between culture workers and politicians. It would not only reinforce the creative interconnections between filmmakers from Russia, Ukraine, the Black Sea region and Europe, but also help to integrate the achievements of national cinema in the pan-European cultural process.

Sebastopol Film Festival brings together game, documentary and animated films. The programme will include Russian and Ukrainian premieres of 2009—2010. There would be a retrospective of Sergey Parajanov movies. Genre experiments and video art works will be given a special attention.

Though “Pobeda” and “Moskva” movie theaters are going to be the main venues of the festival, there would be also some shows in open areas of Sevastopol — Mykhaylovskaya battery, Balaklava tunnel for submarines, Grafskaya Pier. Traditionally, the festival will set in motion summer cinema “Rakushka” (“Shell”) on the Primorskiy boulevard.