The film "Eight and a Half" by Federico Fellini was presented in competition at the Moscow Film Festival. The wait was enormous and at the end the audience expressed their approval with applause which lasted over 20 minutes and which remained an unforgettable and moving experience for Fellini, so much so that it was remembered by the director as the only moment of great emotion he experienced. tried at a screening of one of his films. The triumph of "Eight and a Half" took the official Soviet press by surprise, which reacted by defining the film as "a work far from the life of the people". The maneuvers also began to exclude the Italian masterpiece from the prizes, but the jury, with the forcing of the Western jurors who threatened to resign, thwarted them and awarded the first prize to Fellini's film.