City Tallinn Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Emiliano Granada Luis Renart’s Canary Islands-based Bendita Film Sales has swooped on one of the big winners at Ventana Sur last year: Venezuelan Nico Manzano’s hotly courted debut feature “Me and the Beasts.”Manzano’s debut, which will world premiere on Nov.

Emiliano Granada Berlin-based Pluto Film has acquired international sales rights to Augusto Sandino’s “A Vanishing Fog” which world premieres mid-November at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, playing in main competition.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorU.K.-French sales agent, distribution and production company Alief has picked up worldwide sales for Icelandic haunting mystery title “Quake,” which will have its world premiere Nov. 20 at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann has announced plans for a European solo tour in 2022.Lindemann will hit the road for six dates for his ‘Ich Hasse Kinder (I Hate Kids)’ tour in January, taking in shows in Kiev, Bratislava, Prague, Tallinn, Novosibirsk and Moscow. You can view the dates below.​“The first dates have been announced, the rest will follow shortly.

Leo Barraclough International Features EditorBerlin-based sales outfit M-Appeal has acquired “No Looking Back,” a family drama with a darkly comic edge in which three generations of warring women face-off. The film world premiered at Kinotavr – Open Russian Film Festival in September and makes its international premiere at Tallinn Black Nights Intl.

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Naman Ramachandran U.S. sales agent Outsider Pictures has boarded Abhinandan Banerjee‘s Indian film “The Cloud & the Man” (Manikbabur Megh), while European sales agent The Open Reel is on board Joan Gómez Endara‘s Colombia/Panama project “The Red Tree.” Both films are in the first features competition at the 25th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, where they will have their world premieres.“The Red Tree” is a road movie that tells a story about three people at very different stages of life.

EXCLUSIVE: Game Theory Films has acquired Canadian rights to the Canadian Tibetan-language drama Tenzin. Co-directed by Michael LeBlanc and Joshua Reichmann, the film will have its world premiere at this year’s Tallinn Black Nights Festival next month.

EstoniaKafka Films, Karolina VeetammTallinn-based, focused on narrative and doc features, at Match Me with a slate led by a trio of socially-relevant titles: “Tell Me,” a “poetical documentary,” says producer Veetamm; women’s emancipation tale “Aurora,” from Andres Maimik and Rain Tolk; and “The Last Five,” a dark comedy about Tallinn homeless from Triin Ruumet director of 2016 dark comedy, “The Days That Confused,” a Karlovy Vary East of the West Special Jury Prize winner.

Christopher Vourlias For three small nations tucked away in a far corner of Northeastern Europe, wedged between the sprawling tundra of Scandinavia to the north and the lumbering bear of Russia in the east, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have long realized their strength in numbers: In 1989, amid mass protests calling for independence from the Soviet Union, half a million people joined hands in a human chain stretching from Tallinn to Vilnius.

Christopher Vourlias The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival will be heading to the Croisette for the first time to take part in the annual Goes to Cannes event, the Cannes Film Market’s pix-in-post industry showcase. Variety can reveal the five films that are slated to take part.“We’re very excited to bring our wolf pack to Cannes and the Marché du Film this summer,” said Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival director Tiina Lokk.

Jamie Lang In today’s Global Bulletin, streamers face potential content quotas in Australia, Leonine hires former Red Arrow exec Nina Etspueler, Channel 4 commissions a second Diana doc and Tallinn’s industry section announces its winners.Global platforms facing imminent local production quotas across Europe could be looking at a similar situation in Australia, where new proposed TV reforms could force international streaming services to invest heavily in local content.According to the Sydney

Channel 4 Orders Follow-Up To Influential Princess Diana Film Channel 4 has commissioned Blink Films to make a follow-up to its explosive documentary on Princess Diana’s infamous Panorama interview with the BBC in 1995. The revelations in Blink’s first film, Diana: The Truth Behind The Interview, have sparked an independent inquiry at the BBC to get to the bottom of whether Diana was coerced into the Panorama conversation by reporter Martin Bashir through forged documents and misinformation.

Eli Countryman Creators and screenwriters from Europe discussed the importance of collaboration in filmmaking during a panel in the Variety Streaming Room.Hosted by international features editor Leo Barraclough, the conversation, titled “Lost in Translation? Visual Story Development from Script to Screen,” included creators from the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s Black Room and writers from the Face to Face program.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterScorsese In StockholmMartin Scorsese made an appearance at Sweden’s Stockholm International Film Festival this weekend to receive the event’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Presented with the prize remotely due to ongoing pandemic restrictions, the filmmaker said that he had always had a “real love” for the country’s films.

Jamie Lang In today’s Global Bulletin, Well Go USA takes North American rights to “Here Are the Young Men,” Beta Films and 1-2-3 Production team on two series, Keshet closes deals in Europe, Asia and Australia, and Tallinn Black Nights honors Margarethe Von Trotta.Well Go USA has acquired North American distribution rights for Eoin Macken’s Irish drama “Here Are the Young Men,” and plans to release the film sometime in 2021.Based on Rob Doyle’s eponymous novel, “Here Are the Young Men” unravels

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentItaly-based sales outlet TVCO has acquired international rights to Jonas Kærup Hjort’s Danish black comedy “The Penultimate” ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Tallinn Black Night Film Festival.Described as a “Kafkaesque tale” by Tallinn festival, “The Penultimate” follows an insignificant clerk (Joen Højerslev), who gets trapped inside a secluded building facing an endless maze of obstacles.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterThe Personal History Of David Copperfield filmmaker Armando Iannucci and Escape From Pretoria director Francis Annan will be the recipients of the inaugural DDA Spotlight Award at 24th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: Rome-based sales company TVCO has boarded world rights on Masha, Anastasia Palchikova’s Russian drama which will screen at Tallinn Black Nights in Estonia and have its market premiere at AFM this month.The film is a co-production between Moscow-based companies 1-2-3 Production, the creators of Netflix original series To The lake, and Mars Media, which has credits include T-34 and Arrythmia.Masha premiered at Kinotavr, the Sochi Open Russian Film

Christopher Vourlias As the industry arm of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the leading cinematic showcase for the Baltic nations, the five-day Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event has grown into a lynchpin for conversations about the current and future state of production in the region, bringing together leading entertainment, tech and VC professionals.This year will be no different, even as the coronavirus pandemic has forced organizers to shift to a virtual-only edition—something the

Christopher Vourlias When the first coronavirus lockdown went into effect in Estonia this spring, the organizers of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival—the leading cinema event in the Baltics, which unspools Nov. 13-29 with a hybrid edition—knew they had ample time to prepare for when and how the curtain would rise this fall.

Naman Ramachandran In today’s Global Bulletin, “A Simple Plan” cinematographer wins Tallinn award; Zinc’s Red Sauce adds producers; LGBTQ-themed streamer Froot launches; and Sony Pictures Television-backed Eleven reveals training program for people of color.Estonian-Canadian cinematographer Alar Kivilo will receive the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival‘s inaugural lifetime achievement award.Born in 1953 in Montreal into a family of Estonian emigres, Kivilo began his cinematography career

Tom Grater International Film ReporterViaplay, the streaming service run by Nordic Entertainment Group (NENT Group), is launching in the U.S. next year.

Leo Barraclough Senior International CorrespondentEugen Jebeleanu’s debut feature “Poppy Field” has been sold to Missing Films for distribution in German-speaking territories ahead of its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.The film follows the struggles of a young Romanian policeman Cristi over 24 hours as he tries to find the balance between two parts of his identity: that of a policeman working in a macho environment and that of a closeted gay person.During a visit by

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentParis-based outfit Reel Suspects has acquired “The Three,” directed by up-and-coming Armenian-Russian filmmaker Anna Melikyan. “The Three” will have its international premiere at Tallinn Black Nights and will be distributed in Russia by Disney in December.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterThe winners of the 2020 Irish Film & Television Academy Awards were announced last night, with Lesley Manville and Liam Neeson pic Ordinary Love winning Best Film, presented by Martin Scoresese. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor won Best Actor in Film for Rialto, which also scooped the Scriptwriter prize for Mark O’Halloran.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefSingapore’s 108 Media has picked up international sales duties on Indian drama film “Lorni – The Flaneur.” Directed by Wanphrang K, Diengdoh, the film had its premiere at the Black Nights festival in Tallinn in November last year.

Naman Ramachandran Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, the Tallinn Black Nights film festival’s industry strand, is going completely online due to likely travel restrictions caused by the resurgence of COVID-19.Travel around the world is in a state of flux in several countries, with varying quarantine requirements.

but was postponed just over two weeks before the festival was due to get underway because of the coronavirus outbreak.It was later confirmed that the bash would take place from August 26-30 following a decision by the Estonian government.Organisers have now set out new measures for the event to go ahead in the wake of the pandemic.

The new music showcase is planning to adapt their 2020 programme to meet the Estonian government's rules on social gatherings