During the May holidays, the world's only Icebreaker Festival will be held in St. Petersburg. It will feature operating icebreakers, which will be open for free visits. Guests of honor will be Pyotr Fyodorov and Alexander Pal – they will present the film «Icebreaker» to the Festival's guests.
The Third Icebreaker Festival will take place in St. Petersburg on May 2 and 3. The operating icebreakers of the Northwestern Basin branch of FSUE «Rosmorport» will be moored at the English Embankment and Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment: «St. Petersburg», «Mudyug», «Ivan Krusenstern», «Captain Sorokin». All of them will be open for free visits. The event will also feature the St. Petersburg icebreaker-tug «Nevsky Zastava» and the festival's flagship – the legendary icebreaker-museum «Krasin», which turned 99 years old this year.
An important part of the program on land is an open-air cinema, where documentary and feature films about the development of the Arctic and icebreakers will be shown. And the main surprise will be the presentation of one of the most anticipated domestic film premieres – the feature film «Icebreaker». The plot of the picture is based on real events that occurred in 1985 with the research vessel «Mikhail Somov», which became trapped in Antarctic ice and spent 133 days in forced drift. At the interactive site dedicated to the film, festival guests will learn how the filming process went, watch trailers and behind-the-scenes footage, be able to talk with the actors, and a special photo zone will allow them to feel like the film's heroes and experience all the magic of cinema.
In addition, festival visitors will be able to visit the decks of real icebreakers and see the sea giants in all their glory from the water. For the first time, special excursions along the waters of the Greater Neva on river trams will be organized for this purpose; tickets can be purchased directly at the festival.
The Icebreaker Festival was first held in St. Petersburg in the year of the 150th anniversary of Russia's icebreaker fleet in 2014. Today it has become a new brand of St. Petersburg – the icebreaker fleet celebration with a ship parade and the opportunity for all to visit them takes place nowhere else in the world.
This year's festival program will be educational in nature. Outdoor exhibitions dedicated to the history of the icebreaker fleet, the 75th anniversary of the first Soviet Arctic convoy «Dervish», as well as interactive expositions and presentations from maritime universities and specialized museums will be set up at the festive site. Themed interactive entertainment and quest programs will be organized for festival guests. An open lecture hall will be running, where fascinating lectures on the exploration and development of the Arctic, conversations with captains and icebreaker crew members will take place. DJs will be working on the English Embankment, and the main stage on the Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment will be a venue for film-concert program presentations, a platform for talk shows and meetings with interesting people and actors.
The Icebreaker Festival will last two days and will end with a spectacular tugboat dance in the waters of the Greater Neva and an impressive departure of icebreakers from the piers.
The Third Icebreaker Festival is held in accordance with the plan of events of the Marine Board under the Government of the Russian Federation for 2016, with the support of the Government of St. Petersburg and the Marine Council under the Government of St. Petersburg. This year, its main organizers are FSUE «Rosmorport», the branch of the World Ocean Museum in St. Petersburg «Icebreaker Krasin», and the Union of Social, Cultural and Civic Development of Society «Preobrazhenie».
The main goals of the festival are the popularization of the domestic icebreaker fleet and shipbuilding, polar professions, the history of exploration and modernity of the Arctic, promoting the image of Russia as a great maritime power and St. Petersburg as a maritime capital.