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BLACK NIGHTS 2018

Tallinn Black Nights reveals first batch of competition titles

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- Out of the eight films announced so far for the Official Selection, four are European and seven will have their world premieres at Tallinn

Tallinn Black Nights reveals first batch of competition titles
A Shelter Among the Clouds by Robert Budina

The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (16 November-3 December) has revealed the first eight films that will take part in its main competition section, the Official Selection. Seven of these movies will have their world premieres at Tallinn, and four of them are European, while one is a European minority co-production.

Probably the hottest title on the list is Until We Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm
film profile
]
, the second film by Denmark's Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm, whose excellent debut, In Your Arms [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm
film profile
]
, won the Göteborg Dragon Award in 2015. Presented at this year's Nordic Film Market under the working title Happy People, the film is about a couple who, mourning the loss of their son, return to their flat in a quaint Spanish coastal town to try to find closure and rebuild their love for each other, only to encounter more pain.

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Gábor Reisz, who provided Hungarian cinema with a breath of fresh air with his quirky 2014 Karlovy Vary comedy For Some Inexplicable Reason [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, will present his second feature, Bad Poems [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, about a 33-year-old who, after his girlfriend leaves him, takes a trip down memory lane to figure out what went wrong. The film is described as a playful collage of memories from different periods in his life, featuring four different variations of himself in dialogue.

In seasoned Finnish writer Juha Lehtola's second film as a director, The Human Part [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juha Lehtola
film profile
]
, one of the country's most celebrated actors, Hannu-Pekka Björkman (The Other Side of Hope [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Aki Kaurismäki
film profile
]
), plays the bankrupt protagonist who holds down a full-time job as a swindler to keep up the façade that he is still the successful businessman he used to be, thus attempting to fool both society and his family. The project also took part in this year's Nordic Film Market.

Albanian director Robert Budina, whose debut, Agon, was the country's Oscar submission in 2013, will take part in the competition with his sophomore feature, A Shelter Among the Clouds [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Robert Budina
film profile
]
. Set in the Albanian Alps, it is a story about a shepherd, woodcarver and devout Muslim with a slight intellectual disorder, whose life is thrown out of kilter after the death of his father and the return of his multi-faith family, who have their hearts set on seizing the old house.

The Colombian-French co-production Wandering Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rubén Mendoza, Sofía Paz Ja…
film profile
]
, the eighth feature-length film by Rubén Mendoza (The Stoplight Society and Miss Maria, Skirting the Mountain), is a road movie about four step-sisters from different mothers who are brought together by the death of their father and who embark on a journey to take the youngest of them to live with an aunt in the countryside.

Topping off the first Tallinn selection announcement are A Place to Live by Canada's Bernard Émond, The Guest by Egypt's Hadi Elbagoury and Two Fridas by Costa Rica's Ishtar Yasin.

The full line-up of the Official Selection will be announced on 18 October.

Here is the list of titles announced so far:

A Shelter Among the Clouds [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Robert Budina
film profile
]
 – Robert Budina (Albania)
A Place to Live – Bernard Émond (Canada) 
Bad Poems [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
Gábor Reisz (Hungary)
The Guest – Hadi Elbagoury (Egypt)
The Human Part [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juha Lehtola
film profile
]
 – Juha Lehtola (Finland)
Two Fridas – Ishtar Yasin (Costa Rica)
Until We Fall [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm
film profile
]
 – Samanou Acheche Sahlstrøm (Denmark)
Wandering Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rubén Mendoza, Sofía Paz Ja…
film profile
]
Rubén Mendoza (Colombia/France)

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