30/11/2005

192 feature films from 55 countries –including 32 competing films- will screen as part of the main programme of the 9th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival which starts tomorrow with the special presentation of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s classic The Passion of Joan of Arc and closes on 11 December.

The festival which aim is to present Estonian audiences a comprehensive selection of world cinema with an emphasis on European films, will for the second time organise the EurAsia competition programme with 19 films to be judged by Norwegian filmmaker Eva Isaksen (Mother’s Elling), Turkish filmmaker Yesim Ustaoglu (Waiting For the Clouds), Estonian former Minister of Culture Jaak Allik, German cinematographer Thomas Mauch (Fitzcarraldo), and US scriptwriter James Ragan.
Among the films introduced by their directors are Diane Bertrand’s French co-production The Ring Finger, Robinson Savary’s Luxembourg/UK/German/Austrian co-production Bye Bye Blackbird [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Richard Hobert’s Swedish film Harry’s Daughters, the brothers Quay’s UK film The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes. The actors Carlo Ferrante and Kais Naschef will also be on hand to present respectively Vincent Lannoo’s Ordinary Man and Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

For the first time, Estonian films will have their own competition with 13 titles selected including Kaaren Kaer’s Men At Arms, and Peeter Urbla’s Shop of Dreams (Estonia’s entry for a 2005 Oscars® nomination).
8 December will be the ‘French Day’ with 10 French or French-co-productions screening, an event co-organised by the French Cultural Centre in Tallinn.
The business side of film will be covered by Eurimages’ Executive Secretary Renate Roginas who will discuss on the 1rst ‘The art of co-production from development to marketing’, and for the first time, a co-production market will take place on 1-2 December. It will be followed on 2-3 December by two days screenings of Baltic films as part of the ‘Baltic Event’.