FIRST ESTONIAN FILM IN VENICE – "AUTUMN BALL“ by Veiko Õunpuu
July 26, 2006
VEIKO ÕUNPUU‘s first full-length feature film, "AUTUMN BALL“, is the first Estonian film to be chosen for a Venice competition program. The festival’s official press release today announced the film for the „Orizzonti“ program. The film first caught the attention of the Venice Director’s Fortnight at a closed screening in Cannes before later being picked up by the official program of the festival.
VEIKO ÕUNPUU’s last film, the medium-length feature EMPTY, won every award given to films in Estonia in 2006, including Best Film at the Estonian Film Days and the Estonian Film Journalist Association Film of the Year Award. The film premiered in the Karlovy Vary Forum of Independents section and went on to screen at Stockholm, Mannheim-Heidelberg, Seoul, Centre Pompidou, Angers, etc. French and German TV rights were picked up by ARTE earlier this year.
AUTUMN BALL is a first full-length feature for producer KATRIN KISSA as well. She produced EMPTY with Õunpuu and is developing his next script at the European Audiovisual Enterpeneurs (EAVE) workshop for producers. AUTUMN BALL was produced by Kuukulgur Film and Homeless Bob Production and co-produced by Tugev Tuul Films.
AUTUMN BALL is a coal-black comedy of solitude, hope and desperation. The film shows some chosen moments from the life of six people living in a sprawling conurbation of tower blocks built during the Soviet era. How close can we get to other human beings? Is it possible to live a life completely devoid of love? Can someone, who has experienced how fragile a state of affairs shared happiness is, trust another again? The gently stylized and indifferent world of the AUTUMN BALL steadily advances towards winter and will not give any answers to these questions. What this world can demonstrate, though, is the possibility for laughter even there, where hope has long since become a sparse commodity.
The film will premiere in Estonia on Sept. 13, 2007.
Additional information:
Lili Pilt
Head of International Relations, Estonian Film Foundation
+372 533 24 618
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Katrin Kissa, producer
+372 566 77 855
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
____________________
Lili Pilt
International Relations
Estonian Film Foundation
Vana-Viru 3
10111 Tallinn, Estonia
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
phone: +372 627 6068
fax: +372 627 6061
mobile: +372 533 24 618
