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BLACK NIGHTS 2019 First Feature Competition

Tallinn Black Nights rounds off its First Feature Competition line-up

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- Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has added ten new titles, including eight international premieres, to the list of movies competing in the First Feature Competition

Tallinn Black Nights rounds off its First Feature Competition line-up
Finky by Dathai Keane

Topping off the list of already announced titles – including Matías Ganz’s A Dog’s Death [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, Park Hee-kwon’s Dust and Ashes, Jure Pavlović’s Mater [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jure Pavlović
film profile
]
, Looted [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rene Pannevis
film profile
]
by Rene Pannevis, Lorni - The Flaneur by Wanphrang Diengdoh, Saul at Night by Cory Santilli as well as The Names of the Flowers by Bahman Tavoosi and Bernardo Barreto’s The Seeker – the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has completed the selection of its First Feature Competition section. It’s one that, as Cineuropa finds out, embodies the festival’s mission to “discover emerging creative voices from all over the world, offering them a first launchpad and help to gain international recognition” – as well as a €5,000 grant, to be shared by the director and producer of the title named Best Film.

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Isaac [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jurgis Matulevičius
film profile
]
by Lithuanian director Jurgis Matulevičius will celebrate its world premiere, diving into the darkness of 20th-century history with its focus on a political activist called Andrius Gluosnis, who kills the title character during the infamous Lietūkis Garage Massacre in 1941. “We wanted to comprehend the everyday life of the post-war Soviet era and to better understand our parents, grandparents and the whole society of that time,” says the director. “However, the ideas of the film should be relevant to any historical period, as Isaac is about the constant fight within the human being, with himself and his environment.” In turn, in Tomorrow We Are Free [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hossein Pourseifi
film profile
]
, Hossein Pourseifi (who himself was only four when his family moved to Germany) will go all the way back to 1979, showing a woman from East Germany following her husband to Tehran in the wake of the Islamic Revolution. Another bout of time travelling will be provided by Stories From the Chestnut Woods [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, coming to Tallinn from Toronto, with director Gregor Božič returning to the world of his childhood on the border of Italy and Slovenia while telling the story of an old carpenter and a chestnut seller, sharing their memories while making decisions that could have an impact on their future in the world after World War II.

Italy’s Emanuela Rossi will switch things up with her “fairy tale for grown-up children” called Darkness [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, about a teenage girl living with her father and two younger sisters in a remote, isolated house, which she is told not to leave under any circumstances. Fantasy and realism will also walk hand in hand in Dathaí Keane’s Finky [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dathai Keane
film profile
]
, loosely inspired by Pádraic Ó Conaire’s novel Deoraíocht, which sees a musician, crippled in an accident, suddenly recruited by an avant-garde circus. “The story of Finky is structured around a psychological exploration of guilt, and the search for forgiveness and redemption. Finky is punishing himself for his sins; will he be able to forgive himself and move on?” explains the director to Cineuropa. “He is a complex character – full of rage, yearning, loss and hope. He is neither a hero nor a villain. His journey is similar to that of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and he embarks on a twisted odyssey over the rainbow. It’s a feverish and frenetic opera of the street: Finky’s not in Kansas any more.” Another unusual protagonist will come courtesy of Elisa Mishto’s Stay Still [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, a portrait of an acid-tongued mental patient, known for seducing men and setting things on fire. That is, until she meets a nurse, and a full-blown rebellion ensues.

Soroush Sehat will talk about life while addressing the ever-difficult subject of death in Dance With Me, with a group of old friends meeting up for a birthday only to receive some difficult news. Tricky topics will also be dealt with in Zoltán Nagy’s debut, On the Quiet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Zoltán Nagy
film profile
]
, where a teenage boy – a lead violinist in his conservatory’s orchestra – learns something unpleasant about a veteran conductor he has been treating as a father figure. Complicated tensions find their way into Obscure as well, with Kunlin Wang presenting the journey of a boy who discovers a sexual relationship between two people he has been looking up to. Finally, Poland’s Bartosz Kruhlik will show Supernova [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bartosz Kruhlik
film profile
]
– a mixture of different genres concentrating on a few hours in the life of a rural community, affected by an accident. “The participation of Supernova in the debut competition at the Black Nights Film Festival is a great joy for us and for the whole team,” Kruhlik tells Cineuropa. “I am very happy because it will be our first encounter with a foreign audience, already at an ‘A’ festival. We are a ‘young’ film, and the Tallinn Film Festival is still a fairly young event. I hope that something interesting will come out of the combination of these two energies.”

Here is the full line-up:

First Feature Competition

Looted [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rene Pannevis
film profile
]
- Rene Pannevis (UK)
Mater [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jure Pavlović
film profile
]
- Jure Pavlović (Croatia/Serbia/France/Bosnia and Herzegovina)
A Dog’s Death [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Matías Ganz (Uruguay/France/Argentina)
Lorni - The Flaneur - Wanphrang Diengdoh (India)
Saul at Night - Cory Santilli (USA)
The Seeker - Bernardo Barreto (Brazil)
Dust and Ashes - Park Hee-kwon (South Korea)
The Names of the Flowers - Bahman Tavoosi (Bolivia/Qatar/USA/Canada)
Dance With Me - Soroush Sehat (Iran)
Darkness [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Emanuela Rossi (Italy)
Finky [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dathai Keane
film profile
]
- Dathai Keane (Ireland)
On the Quiet [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Zoltán Nagy
film profile
]
- Zoltán Nagy (Hungary)
Isaac [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jurgis Matulevičius
film profile
]
- Jurgis Matulevičius (Lithuania/Poland)
Obscure - Kunlin Wang (USA/China)
Stay Still [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Elisa Mishto (Germany)
Stories From the Chestnut Woods [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Gregor Božič (Slovenia/Italy/Germany)
Supernova [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bartosz Kruhlik
film profile
]
- Bartosz Kruhlik (Poland)
Tomorrow We Are Free [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hossein Pourseifi
film profile
]
- Hossein Pourseifi (Germany)

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