The 20th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival kicked off Nov 11th with a record number of guests and press attending - around 1000 - and a programme of 200 films. The festival will see visits from all competition directors as well as names like Russian producerAlexandr Rodnyansky (Leviathan, Elena, Cloud Atlas), and Oscar nominated producer Uberto Pasolini (The Full Monty), heading the Main Competition jury. The festival’s Opening Ceremony took place in the Nordea Concert Hall with a Black Carpet and a special show designed to celebrate the festival’s country of focus this year – France. The opening film is Eternity, a visually lavish tale of life’s cycles studied through three generations of a French upper class family. Director Tran Anh Hung has been awarded both the Golden Camera in Cannes for The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) and the Golden Lion in Venice for Cyclo (1995).
Guests and special screenings Out of the 200 films in the programme more than 80 will have guests with them to present the films – a record in itself for Black Nights. Among them are the prominent Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky who has produced Hollywood projects such as Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Cloud Atlas in addition to the Academy Award-nominated Leviathan and Elena (dir Andrey Zvyagintsev), who is present at the screening of his latest project, the stylized thriller The Duelist by director Aleksey Mizgirev. Among other Russians visiting the festival are the Cannes Best Director winner Pavel Lungin whose film Queen of Spades will compete for the festival’s Grand Prix in the Main Competition and director Kira Kovalenko whose Sofichkacompetes in the First Features competition programme. Among the 10 Special Screenings – films that the programming team have selected for highlighting for various different reasons – is the European premiere of the teen comedy Edge of Seventeen with the rising star Hayden Szeto attending the screening. The distributor Sony Pictures Entertainment will also have a representative at the the festival’s industry event Industry@Tallinn with PR & Marketing executive Pam Rodi speaking at the Storytek Forum conference. Director Seifollah Samadian will be presenting his 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds with Abbas Kiarostami, a portrait of the recently departured legend of Iranian cinema. The screening will also include the short film Take me home, directed by Kiarostami himself. It is part of the last film he made, a collection of short films. The full film will be screened at Cannes Film Festival in 2017. The festival will also see the world premiere of the Estonian documentary Shusha by directors Lauri Lippmaa and Aivar Valdre, a portrait of the first president of Belorussia, Stanislav Suskevich, who will attend the screening and hold a press conference. See the full line-up here: http://2016.poff.ee/eng/films/programs
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival takes place on 11-27 November. Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event take place on 17-24 November.www.industrytallinn.com Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has three sub-festivals: Animation Film Festival Animated Dreams takes place on 16-20 November.http://www.anima.ee/ Children’s and Youth Film Festival Just Film takes place on 11-20 November.
http://www.justfilm.ee/ Short Film Festival Sleepwalkers takes place on 12-16 November.
http://swff.ee/ | 
