Baltic Event Co-Production Market Anniversary Edition Projects Announced

19-11-2009

Baltic Event Co-Production Market Anniversary Edition Projects Announced

The Baltic Event Co-Production Market celebrates its 5th Anniversary from November 29 - December 2, 2009 in Tallinn, Estonia.

Though Baltic Event, itself, has eight years of activity under its belt, we keep making innovations to ensure that we are presenting the best yearly overview that our region has to offer. This year's additions include screenings of Finnish projects in the Coming Soon section and a continuation of last year's POWR scriptwriting seminar.

The anniversary Baltic Event Co-Production Market will take place during the Black Nights Film Festival on 30 November - 1 December. As always, we will present challenging and controversial projects from the Baltic States, Scandinavia, East-Central Europe and Russia. A total of 12 projects have been pre-selected for the co-production market.

There's a particularly strong presence on the part of Baltic projects this year, with Estonia's own Kadri Kõusaar presenting her new film project EUROPEAN PSYCHO (Meteoriit, producer Aet Laigu). Her last film, MAGNUS, screened in Un Cerain Regard section at Cannes 2007. We are also happy to present our market's second feature project by Lithuanian filmmaking maestro Sharunas Bartas, the project FLING A STONE, DAVID! (Era film/Kinema Studio, producers Rasa Miskinyte, Jurga Dikciuviene). Latvia is also represented by a project from up-and-coming film studio Locomotive Productions. They are presenting the project PEOPLE THERE by Aik Karapetian (producer Robert Vinovskis).

And what would the Baltic Event Co-Production Market be without projects from our Northern neighbors? This year we have the honor of presenting projects from two of Finland's finest production studios. Making Movies OY brings us Petri Kotwica's next feature project RAT KING (producers Kaarle Aho, Kai Nordberg). Kotwica's last feature BLACK ICE made waves at the Berlinale official competition last year. And Helsinki-filmi OY brings us SOMETHING BLUE, an edgy, indie film project by Hanna Maylett (producer Aleksi Bardy).

Our special focus country for the year is Uzbekistan, which is represented in the market by young producer-director Ella Vakkasova's project ARAL (Quark Films, producers Gavin Humphries, Ella Vakkasova). And, as usual, we present a number of debut projects from the region to help producers and buyers discover our future Kotwicas, Bartases, and Kõusaars.

As a special gift to our anniversary edition, we are able to measure the success of past markets with projects that come back to us as completed films: KINO KARAVAN by Titus Muntean (Romania, Germany) received our prize for Best Pitch in 2007 and is now screening at the Black Nights Film Festival, as is VASHA by Hannu Salonen (Estonia, Germany, Finland, Ireland), which screens in the Baltic competition program.

In addition to the Co-Production Market projects, Baltic Event will feature the ever-popular Coming Soon and Baltic Event screenings sections and Industry Day (December 2nd), presented by the Baltic Film and Media School, will focus on how to get closer to the audience using new media platforms.

The guest list of buyers and experts includes film distributors and sales agents, representatives of TV-channels (buyers and co-financers), representatives of film festivals, regional and national film funds and foundations as well many well known European production companies.

Baltic Event is continuing partnership with the EAVE training program for European producers, resulting in opportunities for young filmmakers to present their work at Baltic Event. Other supporters and partners of the event are the Estonian Film Foundation, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, the Cultural Endowment, MEDIA programme, the National Film Center of Latvia, the Finnish Film Foundation, Tallinn Black Night Film Festival, EAVE, Cannes‘ Marche du Film's Producer's Network, Screen International.

The 12 projects selected for the Baltic Event co-production market are: