The closing ceremony began with an extract from the documentary film Malyutka Zhizn about the poet Arseny Tarkovsky. It was followed with welcome remarks by Arseny Tarkovsky's granddaughter and Andrey Tarkovsky's niece Ekaterina Tarkovskaya: After my mother passed away last year, I took over her friendship with Vyacheslav Aleksandrovich, he is now my best friend. I would like to thank my mom and dad who are no longer with us, but who did so much for museums of Ivanovo region and the Festival. Let's remember them and thank all the participants of the Festival - directors, actors, producers who brought their wonderful films here".

Director of the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts Olga Galaktionova became the host of the closing ceremony.
The main international competition featured 9 films made with the involvement of 15 countries: Russia, Serbia, Italy, Croatia, Romania, Türkiye, Bulgaria, Great Britain, Ireland, India, France, Germany, Poland, Canada, South Korea. The Russian program included 14 films already shown and awarded at Russian and international festivals. The Svoi (Near and Dear). Shorts program featured 16 major Russian short films of the recent years.
The first prize to be announced was the Special Andrey Tarkovsky Prize of the Festival Organizing Committee for Contribution in Cinematography. The actress Margarita Terekhova who played in more than 50 Russian films, including the Mirror by Andrey Tarkovsky, received the award.
Traditionally, not only the jury but also spectators chose the best films at the Zerkalo festival. The Curator of the Festival Mikhail Denezhkin announced the winner in the nomination Svoi. Shorts. The Spectators' Choice. The Crime by Aleksandra Vostrova became the best film and won the award.
"I thank the spectators and the people of the city who came to watch short films, which, as you know, are not widely distributed. It is a very important award for me and I thank you so much for that!", Aleksandra Vostrova noted.

Also, following the tradition, the members of the Ivanovo Film Club The Screen and You awarded their prize. This year they awarded it to Natalia Nazarova after her death for the film Philately. The Film Club also awarded its special prize to the film The Clean Slate by Polina Kondratyeva.

Program Director of the Zerkalo Festival Sergey Lavrentyev announced the winner in the nomination Svoi. The Spectators' Choice. The Svoi program featured a selection of the brightest Russian films of the recent years. The spectators selected Two People in One Life and a Dog by Andrey Zaytsev to be the best film.
"First, we made this film specifically for spectators and this is why I am very happy about such feedback from them. This is the fourth audience prize we have received and for me it is a great success and honor, as I believe this is the most important award a director can get", Zaytsev emphasized receiving the award.
The Audience Prize of the main international competition was awarded by Director of the Department of Culture of Ivanovo Region Natalia Trofimova. The film Four Letters of Love by Polly Steele received the prize.

The jury of the International Competition included Bae Chang-ho, a classic of South Korean cinema, winner and participant of international film festivals; Andrea Gatopoulos, an Italian director, producer and distributor, whose films have participated in key world festivals; Rashmi Doraiswamy, an Indian film critic, professor, honorary editor-in-chief of the world's first magazine Cinemaya about Asian cinema; Alla Sigalova, a choreographer, director, teacher, Honored Arts Worker of the Russian Federation, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation and Nikita Kartsev, a film critic, editor-in-chief of the Art of Cinema magazine.
"Each of the films in the competition program expressed author's unique style and cinematic language. I would like to thank the organizers for such a strong competition where I and my colleagues had to select just one winner", noted Rashmi Dorayswami.
The jury awarded a special prize to the criminal drama Santosh by Sandhya Suri.
The best director award went to Bogdan Mureșanu for the film The New Year That Never Came.
The jury awarded the main prize to the drama What Does That Nature Say to You by Hong Sang-soo, which earlier took part in the main program of the Berlin Film Festival.

The Russian premiere of the film Buddies and the Heir by Marcelo Galvão became the closing film of the Festival. The plot of the film focuses on the main character having Down syndrome who gathers his friends from the boarding house and sets off on a dangerous journey to fight for his inheritance and has to stand against smugglers.
Marcelo Galvão is a renowned Brazilian director and a cinema and advertising visionary. He made ten full-length films recognized by critics and having participated in major international festivals and recognized with various prizes. His work The Killer, the first Netflix original project in Brazil, set a new standard for the Brazilian cinema globally.

More than 80 films were screened during the five days of the Festival having attracted over 13 thousand spectators. Besides the competition programs, the Festival featured broad out-of-competition sections, including Tarkovsky Today, Architecture and Cinema, Music and Cinema, a special program dedicated to the 165th anniversary of Anton Chekhov and the experimental student sections Dear Heart and Small Secrets presented by the Design School of the Higher School of Economics.
Besides the Museum and Exhibition Center and the oldest Lodz cinema, an art space in the railway station actively worked on two days of the Festival offering a reading hall with free access to everyone. Together with BOMBORA publishing house, the Festival prepared a cozy space where one could flip through and read books about cinema, theater, directing and art in general. The reading hall also hosted an exhibition of costume illustrations for Andrey Tarkovsky's films prepared by students and teachers of the sewing product design department of Ivanovo State Polytechnic University. It featured thoroughly recreated costume replicas from Andrey Tarkovsky's key films: Andrey Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, The Sacrifice.
One of the key events within the educational program of the Festival was the creative meeting with the photo artist and cinematographer Grigory Verkhovsky as part of the presentation of the book Stalker of Andrey Tarkovsky in Photographs by Grigory Verkhovsky. Verkhovsky took part in the making of this legendary film in 1978. Also, the program included a presentation of the book by Lilia Klassen Going the Stalker Way telling the story of how this iconic Tarkovsky's film was made.
On June 28, as part of its finale IV Russian National Video Art Competition Tarkovsky's Worlds organized by ROSIZO defined winners in seven nominations. The winners by category are: House of Stains by Ekaterina Kravchuk (Love category, Moscow), Dreamer by Dmitry Zuev (Childhood, Balashikha Moscow region), Encounter with Childhood by Ekaterina Chichina (Nostalgia, Moscow), I/O by Roman Isaev and Vitaly Ageenkov (Space, Saratov), White White Evening by Anna Putenis (Landscape, Moscow). The work Manifestation by Sergey Kozintsev (Moscow) won in the Sleep nomination and Polina Guryeva's (Ryazan) Donkey Eating Oat took the prize in the Philosophy category.
The Festival also featured a ROSIZO exhibition Vision of Non-Existence, the title of which was inspired by Galina Zelenskaya's cinema research article about Andrey Tarkovsky's film Ivan's Childhood. The expo mainly consisted of fine art objects from ROSIZO collection and Mosfilm's photo materials depicting the most expressive stills from the film Ivan's Childhood. The exhibition will be available at the Ivanovo D. Burylin State History and Regional Studies Museum until the end of this summer.
The Obyekt. Obyekt gallery in Palekh presented the multimedia project by Anna Kuznetsova and the WHITEMOUSE group Tarkovsky's Dog. It refers to how its authors met Dakus the sheep dog, which remained in Andrey Tarkovsky's house after his departure in 1985. The project is dedicated to the bright memories of Marina Tarkovskaya (1934-2024), a writer and memoirist.
The opening of the Festival traditionally took place in Yuryevets, the native town of Andrey Tarkovsky. Andrey Merzlikin, the Honored Artist of Russia, hosted the ceremony. More than a thousand guests came together in the town square on June 27 to watch the Festival opening and listen to a concert by Yulia Peresild and the MANDRAGORA band.