Home and story
The first encounter, festival positioning, key events and partners.
Web development · 2024–2026Visit website
Unknown Russia
A digital platform for an international documentary film festival — from the first encounter with the programme to submissions, accreditation and the archive.
Challenge
One website for a living festival
The festival programme changes every season and brings together films, nominations, jury members, screenings, the industry programme, news and partners. We designed a system that lets the editorial team update this structure without rebuilding the site, while viewers can move quickly from the festival story to a specific film or event.
Key screens
The audience journey and the team’s working sections
The home page introduces the festival, then the interface leads viewers to a film, a screening or a person. Operational journeys — submissions and accreditation — use the same visual and navigation system.
Films and nominations
A catalogue of participants and winners with a detailed page for every film.
Schedule
Screenings connect films, dates and venues, making the programme easy to browse by day.
Jury and people
Dedicated pages for experts, filmmakers and documentary protagonists.
News and archive
Editorial stories and standalone pages for the 2024 and 2025 editions.
Submissions and accreditation
Multi-step forms for participants, pitching and media representatives.
Visual language
Documentary cinema as an encounter with the unknown
Large typography, fragmented portraits and the question mark create a recognisable rhythm. Black-and-white documentary frames alternate with saturated colour layers, keeping the interface expressive without competing with the films.
Automation
Content updates without rebuilding pages by hand
Editors manage materials in the CMS, the API brings them into a consistent structure, and the website automatically assembles each view — from a film page to the schedule for a specific day.
CMS→API→Website
Connected data
Films, nominations, screenings, venues and people are linked and reused across sections.
Content updates
News, programme items and participant lists come from the CMS and appear after a short refresh interval.
Submission processing
Forms validate required fields, send data to protected storage and take the user to a confirmation screen.
Migration without downtime
A compatible API format allowed the data layer to move from Strapi to Django gradually, without rebuilding the whole front end at once.
Outcome
A platform that grows with the festival
The website brings the public programme and the team’s working processes into one system. New seasons retain a shared structure while previous editions remain available — allowing the project to evolve without losing accumulated content.
The project is liveunknownrussiafest.ru