21/10/2013 - New award designed to foster closer relations between European and Asian Film industries.

Industry@Tallinn – the industry section of Estonia’s Black Nights Film Festival – has announced a collaboration with the TIFFCOM CoPro Connection to present the Tallinn Black Nights Japan-Estonia Partnership Award. The new award aims to encourage cooperation between the film industries of Japan, Estonia and Northern Europe by bringing one Japanese coproduction team with the best European cooperation potential to Industry@Tallinn.

The winning project will be picked and announced during the TIFFCOM CoPro Connection running October 22-24. Selected Japanese awardees and Estonian filmmakers will present and discuss cooperation possibilities at the film industry meetings from November 25-29 in Tallinn.

The award is based on long-term collaboration with UNIJAPAN – the promotional agency for Japanese Cinema – and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, with the aim to encourage Estonian-Japanese film collaborations and coproductions as well as the first step to market Estonian filmmaking, production services and talents to Asia via the FilmEstonia and Estonian Film Cluster programs.

“The previous year has marked a rapid increase in the two way interest in collaboration between Estonian and Japanese filmmaking communities with several production and post-production initiatives in discussion. We hope that the new award will both open ways for Japanese filmmakers to easily access European funding and production possibilities, and Estonian film cluster members to the large Japanese market”, comments Sten Saluveer, Industry Director of Tallinn Black Nights FF.

Industry@Tallinn (Nov 25-29) is a set of film industry oriented events during the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival organized by the Black Nights Film Festival and Baltic Event.

TIFFCOM CoPro Connection (Oct 22-24) is an occasion for Japanese and overseas filmmakers to come together to pursue their goal of working on international coproductions.