Social debate film festival underway in Russia

Stone recently unveiled 10-part US history series Zagreb – Arabstoday US three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone has received a lifetime achievement award at a film festival in Croatia which hosts debate on social issues. Stone became the first person to receive a Wild Dreamer award at the sixth annual Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb late on Sunday.
"I'm especially proud to be here to show our ten-part series the Untold History of the US," Stone said at the ceremony.
The 66-year-old, who won Academy Awards for Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and Midnight Express, has directed films as diverse as presidential thriller Nixon and killing spree feature Natural Born Killers.
His documentary presented in Zagreb looks back at some of the darkest events in the US history from the atomic bombing of Japan during World War II to present days.
"I always see a lot of self-criticism in Eastern Europe and I admire that because we need a little bit more of it in the US, a little bit more questioning what we are up to," Stone said.
"It's important to keep subverting but at the same time question yourselves too, question what you do and keep this challenge up. The West, the US particularly, has to be challenged at this point," he said.
More than 300 filmmakers, intellectuals, activists and writers from all over the world take part in the two-week festival that opened on May 4.
The festival aims to offer "space for serious political, social and cultural analysis aimed at questioning and finding alternatives to challenge and change local and global power relations," according to a statement.
The participants included head of Greece's main opposition left-wing Syriza party, British Pakistani leftist intellectual Tariq Ali and Slovenian Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek.