Documentary development and production grants and minority coproduction grants announced by the Estonian Film Institute on 27 October 2017.

 

The festival of American cinema in Wroclaw is coming to an end. Winners of the 8th American Film Festival were announced at today's closing gala.

Traditionally, the audience was the jury of the AFF, by voting for their favorite films. Of the 13 films in the Spectrum section, the vote winner was John Carroll Lynch's Lucky, with the final role of Harry Dean Stanton, who previously starred in Twin Peaks and Paris, Texas. He plays a loner seeking answers to the meaning of the passage of time and gets help from a gaggle of stars, including David Lynch.

Of the 10 documentaries in the American Docs section, audience members chose The Work by Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous. The film is a visit to one of the worst places in the world, but, at the same time, it works as a kind of unusual therapy. We watch a group of people who let themselves get locked up twice a year in the notorious Folsom prison.

The winning films received prizes of $10,000 (feature) and $5,000 (documentary), funded byBNY Mellon.

This year, for the first time in AFF history, there was a new section called the Ale Kino+ Competition. A jury selected from the AFF’s most loyal viewers chose 3 out of 10 films, which will be shown on the Ale Kino+ cable channel in the coming months.

Ale Kino+ Competition Winners:

Alex Ross Perry's  Golden Exit - "For showing the ordinary lives of ordinary people in an extremely melancholic, nostalgic and emotional way."

Eliza Hittman’s  Beach Rats - "For subtle and empathic themes of adolescence and the discovery of one's sexuality."

Onur Tukel’s  The Misogynists - "For a bold, ironic and disturbingly current socio-political diagnosis that evokes laughter, trepidation and sorrow all at the same time."

 

TALLINN: Ten Baltic projects and an additional twelve international films will be presented at two Works in Progress sections taking place under the Industry@Tallinn event 27 November – 1 December 2017 during the Black Nights festival.

TALLINN: Twenty projects have been selected for the Co-Production Market taking place on 29 November – 1 December 2017, at Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event during Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

COTTBUS: The Slovak box office hit The Line by Peter Bebjak, Georgian director George Ovashvili’s Khibula and Slovenian director Jan Cvitkovic’s The Basics of Killing are among the 12 films selected for the main competition of the 27th Cottbus Film Festival, running 7 – 12 November 2017.

BRATISLAVA: Tereza Nvota’s documentary film Meciar, about the the populist former Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, had 10,572 admissions in its first ten days of release in Slovakia. The film opened in fifth place, dropping to eighth place in its second week in distribution.

Doclisboa is screening the largest ever retrospective of Czech filmmaker Vera Chytilova.

 

Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event announce the jury, awards and projects that have been selected into the two works in progress showcases - the International and Baltic Event Works In Progress, which are screened to the sales agents and festival programmers onNovember the 29th and 30th respectively. The Industry@Tallinn &; Baltic Event will take place from November the 27th to December 1st.

International Works In Progress
Entering the third year of International Works in Progress, Industry@Tallinn introduces twelve projects from South America, United States, and Europe in the post-production stage, looking for sales agents to represent them and festivals to screen them.

Triin Tramberg, International Works In Progress Coordinator comments: ‘We are proud that many of our last year’s projects had their premieres at various festivals this year. The Lines premiered in Karlovy Vary, Easy in Locarno, and the Toronto Film Festival picked upSuleiman Mountain, Village Rockstars, and Salyut-7.

This year’s Works in Progress is dedicated to our good friend, big cinema enthusiast and professional and all in all a great person Igor Gouskov, whom we lost this autumn. His dream was to bring cinema from the former CIS countries to wider audiences. Thanks to his dedication and hard work we had many interesting projects from Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and other countries to choose from. Igor would be proud and we will make it our mission to continue doing our best to find gems from this region and keep his dream alive."

Packing Heavy by Dario Mascambroni, whose previous film January held its European premiere at Berlinale, is an Argentinian story about a young boy looking for answers regarding his father’s death. Amidst the Fog by Augusto Sandino, whose 2016 debutGentle Breath received both the Special Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award at Tallinn Black Nights FF, follows a young man imagining a better fate far from his home in the Andes Mountains.

Moving to North America, Coming to You by Kirill Mikhanovsky is a mystical fable-like thriller inspired by Leo Tolstoy's The Three Questions. Crystal Swan, a co-production between the US, Belarus, and Germany, is the debut for Darya Zhuk, portraying a quest to an American dream derailed by a typo in a forged visa application.

Other projects from the CIS countries include Clay Pit, the latest film by Vera Glagoleva, dealing with women’s happiness and its price, 43, a drama about a woman returning home after a lengthy incarceration by Dimitri Tsintsadze, whose previous films have successfully screened in Cannes and Locarno, Spitak by Alexander Kott, whose The Test and Insighttravelled the festival circuit extensively, telling a story about love and hope in a town destroyed by an earthquake, and the debut by Olya Zueva, In the Hood. Two projects come from Kyrgyzstan - the historical musical Song of the Tree is the directorial debut of Aibek Dairbekov, while Marat Sarulu, presenting Thousand Dreams, won Best Director for his film The Move at Tallinn Black Nights FF in 2014.

The slate is rounded off by two debuts from Europe - one from director Aurelio Laino -Dancing Jellyfish, a thriller about an illegal immigrant, who helps a woman escape from an abusive partner, and As I Fall, a 2016 BE Co-Production Market project by Magnus Meyer Arnesen, exploring the unconventional relationship between a father and son under the looming threat of addiction and separation.

Clay Pit by Vera Glagoleva
Russia, Kazakhstan
Producer: Natalia Ivanova
Co-producers: Shinar Boribaeva (Kazakhstan)
Production companies: Horosho Production, LLP Alizhanfilm

Coming to You by Kirill Mikhanovsky
United States
Producer: A. Austen, K. Mikhanovsky, Drew Houpt
Production company: Give Me Liberty Productions

43 by Dimitry Tsintsadze
Georgia, Russia
Producer: Rusudan Glurjidze 
Co-producers: Nadezhda Gorshkova
Production companies: Cinetech Film Production, Viva Films

The Song of the Tree by Aibek Dairbekov
Kyrgyzstan, Russia
Producers: Tolkun Daırbekova, Andrey Epifanov, Tanya Petrik
Production companies: Central Asia Film (Kyrgyzstan), Cinetrain (Russia)

Amidst the Fog by Augusto Sandino
Colombia, Brazil
Producer: Augusto Sandino
Co-producers: Claudio Cao Quintas, Gio Park, Mario Viana Garcia
Production companies: Schweizen Media Group, Psycut, Viana Producciones

A Dancing Jellyfish by Aurelio Laino
United Kingdom, Italy
Producer: Aurelio Laino
Co-producers: Alessandro D’Alessandro, Germano Wolf
Production companies: Freeside Films (UK), 4Rooms, Decima Rosa (ITA)

As I Fall by Magnus Meyer Arnesen
Norway
Producer: Gyda Velvin Myklebust and Magnus Kristiansen
Production companies: Den Norske Filmskolen

Spitak by Alexander Kott
Armenia, Russia
Producer: Elena Glikman
Co-producers: Tereza Varzhapetyan 
Production companies: Telesto Film

Packing Heavy by Dario Mascambroni
Argentina
Producer Fernanda Rocca
Production companies Rocca Lada Fernanda Gabriela

In the Hood by Olya Zueva
Russia
Producers:  Ruben Dishdidhyanm Danila Kozlovsky
Production companies: Mars Media Entertainment, DK Entertainment

Thousand Dreams by Marat Sarulu
Kyrgyzstan
Producer: Gulmira Kerimova, Aybek Dzhangaziyev
Co-producers: Chinara Kamchibekova
Production companies: film studio Kyrgyzfilm

Crystal Swan by Darya Zhuk
Belarus, Germany, US
Producers: Birgit Goernbock, Debbie Vandermeulen, Olga Goister, Valery Dmitrotchenko
Co-producers: Andrey Isachenko
Production companies: Demarshfilm, Unfound Content, Fusion Features, Vice Films, Belarus Film

Baltic Event Works In Progress

Baltic Event Works in Progress programme, held for the 15th time in 2017, presents ten films in the advanced stages of production or post-production, providing film professionals with an overview of the most promising projects of the Baltic region and Finland.

The Head of Baltic Event, Marge Liiske, is pleased that last year's slate has gone on to premiere at major festivals - Estonia's The End of the Chain and The Man Who Looks Like Me were selected to East of the West competition in Karlovy Vary while The Manslayer / The Virgin / The Shadow will come out in competition at Black Nights FF, and Miracle by Egle Vertelyte, Lithuania, held its world premiere in Toronto. The latter, as well as FinnishLaw of the Land were picked up by sales agents at BE. The latest to be released is The Eternal Road, made in the frame of the “Finland 100” centenary celebrations.

One of the most anticipated projects of the year is the full-length family animation Captain Morten and the Spider Queen by Kaspar Jancis (Estonia, Ireland, Belgium, United Kingdom; BE Co-Production Market 2012), dubbed in Estonian, English, Gaelic and French, and voiced by Ciaran Hinds and Brendan Gleeson among others. Estonia is also represented by award-winning director Martti Helde's second feature Scandinavian Silence (Estonia, France, Belgium; BE Co-Production Market 2016), and three debut features produced within the Estonian centennial film scheme: contemporary drama Take It or Leave It by Liina Trishkina-Vanhatalo, historic family drama The Little Comrade by Moonika Siimets, and the historic mystery drama The Riddle of Jaan Niemand by Kaur Kokk.

Neighbouring Latvia brings The Mover, the story of Latvia’s Schindler by Davis Simanis, and contemporary relationship thriller Nothing Can Stop Us Now by award-winning director Andris Gauja to Baltic screens.

From Lithuania, Baltic Event is happy to welcome back 2016 Eurimages award-winnerMotherland by Tomas Vengris as well as Breathing into Marble by Giedre Beinoriute, a Co-Production Market project from 2012.

We are also thrilled to present One Last Deal by Klaus Härö (BE Co-Production Market 2015), whose latest film The Fencer (2015) was nominated for the Golden Globes and shortlisted for the Oscars.

Captain Morten and the Spider Queen by Kaspar Jancis
Estonia, Ireland, Belgium, UK
Producer: Kerdi Oengo
Co-producers: Paul Cummins, Mark Mertens, Robin Lyons
Production companies: Nukufilm, Telegael, GRID-vfx

The Little Comrade by Moonika Siimets
Estonia
Producer: Riina Sildos
Production company: Amrion

The Riddle of Jaan Niemand by Kaur Kokk
Estonia
Producer: Katrin Kissa
Production company: Homeless Bob Production

Scandinavian Silence by Martti Helde
Estonia, France, Belgium
Producer: Elina Litvinova
Co-producers: Eric Vicente, Frederic de Goldschmidt
Production companies: Three Brothers, ARP Selection, Media International

Take It or Leave It by Liina Trishkina-Vanhatalo
Estonia
Producer: Ivo Felt
Production company: Allfilm

One Last Deal by Klaus Härö
Finland
Producers: Kai Nordberg, Kaarle Aho
Production company: Making Movies Oy

The Mover by Davis Simanis
Latvia
Producer: Gints Grube, Antra Gaile
Production companies: Mistrus Media

Nothing Can Stop Us Now by Andris Gauja
Latvia
Producer: Andris Gauja
Production company: Riverbed

Breathing into Marble by Giedre Beinoriute
Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia
Producer: Dagne Vildžiunaite
Co-producers: Inese Boka-Grube, Matija Radeljak
Production companies: Just a moment, Mistrus Media, Aning Film

Motherland by Tomas Vengris
Lithuania, Latvia
Producer: Uljana Kim
Co-producer: Roberts Vinovskis
Production companies: Studio Uljana Kim, Locomotive Productions

JURY

Maryna Ajaja, Seattle IFF, USA
Olivier Barbier, Wild Bunch, France
Olivier Heitz, MK2, France
Tõnis Kiis, Warner Bros. Entertainment Group of Companies, USA
Hubert von Spreti, Kick Film GmbH, Germany

AWARDS
International Works in Progress Awards

The Post Production Award 10 000 Euros
The Post Production Award provides 10 000 Euros worth of facility services by leading Finnish post house Post Control. The award is given to the project, which successfully combines creative and commercial potential.

Baltic View Award 3000 Euros
In partnership with Noir Lumiere, Baltic View presents an in-kind award. The selected film is awarded a DCP production + online storage and international promotion with Cinema Events (organised by Baltic View) valued at 3000 Euros*.
*Terms & conditions apply

Think of the Music Award 1500 Euros 
A license worth of 1500 Euros, for music represented by Apollo Music, to be used in film and/or promotional materials. The award goes to the project, which has the best and brightest ideas for the use of music.
 

Baltic Event Works in Progress Awards 
Baltic Event Works in Progress Award 3000 Euros
The Baltic Event Works in Progress Award will be given to the project with the strongest and boldest artistic vision. The award will help the film gain visibility during its promotion and distribution in the Baltic States by covering related costs in the region.

Baltic View Award  3000 Euros
In partnership with Noir Lumiere, Baltic View presents an in-kind award. The selected film is awarded a DCP production + online storage and international promotion with Cinema Events (organised by Baltic View) valued at 3000 Euros*.
*Terms & conditions apply

Think of the Music Award 1500 Euros 
A license worth of 1500 Euros, for music represented by Apollo Music, to be used in film and/or promotional materials. The award goes to the project, which has the best and brightest ideas for the use of music.

 

COTTBUS: Poland has a strong presence at the 2017 edition of the East-West coproduction market Connecting Cottbus, taking place 9 and 10 November 2017 during the Cottbus Film Festival, running 7 – 12 November. Poland is represented by three projects from among the 19 projects coming to Cottbus.