Leana Jalukse, Baltic Event Co-Production Market Manager:
"As always, we welcome both established filmmakers as well as promising debutants, and we are delighted to have earned the trust of a string of very experienced producers. It was a challenge making a selection from all the high-quality submissions."

Estonian After Hours, a multiplot following a life-changing night of three sisters, is the second collaboration by director Priit Pääsuke and producer Marianne Ostrat, whose former projects have screened at Venice, San Sebastian, and Karlovy Vary. Another female-centric film comes from our Focus Country Italy, with Cartacrespa by debut director Michele Codarin telling a tale of friendship between two women from vastly different backgrounds. Chemistry by debut director Adina Dulcu, backed by established producer Tudor Giurgiu, Libra Film Productions, Romania, continues on the theme, portraying the story of a woman whose individual fight evolves into an ideological one in a deeply polarised environment.
 
Women are also the main characters in two films exploring the teenage years - French-Finnish A Girl's Room by Aino Suni is a thriller about love and manipulation, while Finnish Inari Niemi's Light Light Light sees a woman on a journey to her adolescence - the summer, which ended in the suicide of her lesbian lover. LGBTQ vs ideology continue to be the main themes in Youri by Sander Burger, the Netherlands, which follows a talented Russian pianist emigrating from the Soviet Union in fear of certain persecution. Similarly, Hungarian Erasing Frank by debut director Gabor Fabricus portrays a talented musician, whose career is destroyed and who is driven to fight his war for freedom from a psychiatric ward in the 1980s. Another artist in peril is Comrade Dona, a Romanian sculptor abducted during a stop-over in North Korea, in the film by director Igor Cobileanski and producer Iuliana Tarnovetchi, whose previous collaboration Eastern Business was presented at BE 2012 and brought home two awards from the official competition of Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2016.
 
Politics and mental issues continue to play a role in Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's Triumph, the third part of a trilogy based on true events. Icelandic Quake by yet another debut director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir tells a harrowing tale of a mother concealing her memory loss in order to keep the custody of her son - as a first, the project was also selected to compete in Script Pool Tallinn this year. Oxygen by Ernestas Jankauskas from Lithuania portrays a woman suffering from anxiety disorder, another issue of critical importance to communicate to the audiences. And Polish Patagonia by debut director Aga Zwiefka, who has won a string of awards for her documentaries, features a dystopian world, in which suicide is a crime.
 
More stories of individuals crushed by the system come from Ukraine, with Zenith by Igor Stekolenko being a psychological thriller about a talented surgeon losing his career after a wrongful accusation, and Finland, with The Oasis of Now by debut director Hamy Ramezan, who has won a string of awards for his short films, and Jussi Rantamäki, who produced Cannes award winner The Happies Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, telling a story about a family of refugees about to be deported. An equally poetic story of migration is Wedding on My Street, a feature film debut by Shota Gamisonia, Georgia, and the theme of broken families is continued in Latvian Lovable by director Stanislavs Tokalovs and successful producer tandem Alise Gelze and Aija Berzina.

AWARDS & JURY
 

A Eurimages Co-Production Development Award worth 20 000 Euro will be handed out by a jury consisting of Emma Scott, Production and Distribution Manager, Screen Ireland, Ireland; Jeremy Zelnik, Head of Industry, Les Arcs Film Festival, France; Giovanni Pompili, Producer, Kino Produzioni, Italy.
 
In addition, one project will receive the Screen International Best Pitch Award, offering coverage of the life-cycle of the winning film, and two producers will receive the Cannes Marché du Film Producers’ Network Award for Promising Young Producer with free accreditations to next year’s edition.

Baltic Event Co-Production Market selection 2018

Supporters and partners of Industry@Tallinn &; Baltic Event are Creative Europe MEDIA Programme, Eurimages, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Estonian Film Institute, Lithuanian Film Center, National Film Centre of Latvia, Finnish Film Foundation, Polish Film Institute, Tallink Hotels, Nordic Hotel Forum, Cannes Marche du Film’s Producers’ Network, Post Control, Baltic View, EAVE, Torino Film Lab, MIDPOINT, In Focus, Screen International, Festival Scope, Creative Gate, Shanghai International Film Festival, Tallinn City Enterprise Department, European Regional Development Fund and Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.