17/09/2010

Estonia has submitted Veiko Õunpuu’s The Temptation of St. Tony [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] for the upcoming Academy Awards nominations in Hollywood. The film is also running for the European Film Awards nominations.

The Temptation already has a US distributor (Olive Films), a major advantage in the tight run-up competition for the Best Foreign Language Film category, for which marketing campaigns play a key role in catching the attention of Academy members.

The European co-production between Homeless Bob Production (Estonia), Bronson Club (Finland) and Atmo (Sweden) centers on a middle-aged man (Taavi Eelmaa) who becomes interested in questions about morality.

Olive Films’ CEO Farhad Arshad has described the black comedy as a “masterfully shot and edited film” and a “marvellous cinematic expression of the Kafkaesque story of good and evil”.

So far, international sales company LevelK has sold the film to over ten territories, including Lithuania, Sweden, Russia and Ukraine. The Temptation of St Tony was released domestically last autumn. It is opening today in the US.

The Oscar nominations will be announced on January 25 and the awards ceremony in Los Angeles is planned for February 27.