Tallinn market projects revealed

New films from Laila Pakalnina (Dawn), Aku Louhimies (True) and Jaak Kilmi (Heroes from the East) are among 12 projects from 11 countries selected for this year’s Baltic Event co-production market which will be held in Tallinn from November 27-29.

Local Estonian film-maker Kilmi will be at the Baltic Event for the second year in a row after presenting another feature project, The Hoppers, which won the Screen International Best Pitch Award last year.

As the Baltic Event’s organisers point out, the 2013 line-up has a large number of feature debutants – six in total – ranging from Romania’s Botond-Csaba Püsök (Miracle in Cluj) through Ukraine’s Marysia Nikitiuk (When The Trees Are Falling) to Finland’s Jussi Hiltunen (Law of the Land).

In addition, Julietta Sichel, the former programme director of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, is coming to Tallinn with her company 8Heads Production and Stanislav Babic of Croatia’s Telefilm to pitch Ministry of Love by Pavo Marinkovic.

B’EST workshop comes to Tallinn

2013’s second producers workshop of Baltic Bridge East by West (B’EST) will be held during the Baltic Event following the first one in St Petersburg in September.

The ten projects at the centre of this training initiative include Ukrainian Oleg Sentsov’s third feature Kai, which was also pitched at Connecting Cottbus last week, UK-based director Tatiana Korol’s Passing Clouds, to be produced by Scala Productions with Wostok, and Azeri film-maker Ru Hasanov’s Northbound, which had been presented at the Moscow

Business Square in June

Kyrgyz producer Altynai Koichumanova will have a busy Baltic Event since she will be at the co-production market pitching Aygul Bakanova’s debut Drifting Snow which is being developed as part of the Cannes Residence Programme.

She is also participating in B’EST with Aktan Arym Kubat’s new feature project Centaur, with France’s A.S.A.P. Films on board again as a co-producer.

The Baltic Event’s programme also features eight projects in the POWR Baltic Stories Exchange script and pitch workshop, as well as 22 Baltic and Finnish projects in the Coming Soon and Screenings showcases.

Industry@Tallinn

Additional industry events are being organised in collaboration with the Black Nights Film Festival under the banner of Industry@Tallinn from November 25-29.

Key developments in Hollywood and the possibilities for joining forces with Europe for new projects and collaborations will be the focus of a panel discussion with such Hollywood executives as producers Garrick Dion, Kyle Franke and Gloria Fan, and talent agent Jeff Barry coming to Tallinn for the first time this year.

Another highlight will be signing of a memorandum of mutual understanding between Estonia and South Korea - the first of its kind in Northern and Eastern Europe - to strengthen the potential for international collaboration between the two countries’ film industries.

The memorandum is set to be signed on November 27 by Edith Sepp, Director of the Estonian Film Institute, and Kim In Soo, Secretary-General of the Korean Film Council, and will be followed by a showcase panel of internationally renowned Korean producers.

Gabrielle opens 17th BNFF

French-Canadian director Louise Archambault’s Gabrielle, the Audience Award winner in Locarno in August, will open Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival on November 15.

255 feature-length films from 70 countries will be screened over the festival’s three weeks to December 1, with special focuses on Armenian cinema, Arctic Inuit films from Canada, and the new wave of Mexican cinema under the banner of “Mexico Bronco”.

The White Ribbon’s DoP Christian Berger, Armenian director Harutan Khacahtryan and German actress Franziska Petri are among the members of the festival’s EurAsia International Competition.

The line-up of films for them to judge include the world premiere of Iranian director Ali Ahmadzadah’s Kami’s Party as well as international premieres of Koji Fukuda’s Au revoir l’été, Konstantin Lopushanskiy’s The Role, Adi Adwan’s Arabani, Yermek Tursumov’s The Old Man, and the Baltic premieres of Richard Ayoade’s The Double and Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman.