The Baltic Event of this year’s Black Nights Film Festival brought a line-up of ten new projects to the industry audience. Although the projects selected in that strand have traditionally hailed from the Baltic Sea region, this year’s selection was even more concentrated, with all ten hailing from the Baltic countries or from Finland. Last year’s laureate of the Baltic Event Works in Progress Award, J-P Valkeapää’s Dogs Don’t Wear Pants [+leggi anche:
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intervista: J.-P. Valkeapää
scheda film], had its premiere in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section.

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Estonia put forward three new projects this year. After The End of the Chain [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Priit Pääsuke
scheda film], which was shown in Karlovy Vary’s East of the West competition in 2017, the director Priit Pääsuke returns with low-budget youth comedy Kids of the Night, which will be about relationships and extensive partying (read article). Meanwhile, Peeter Simm’s (Good Hands, Georg [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]) new feature, the tragicomedy On the Water [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Peeter Simm
scheda film], will explore the growing pains of pre-adolescent Andres (read article). The most ambitious of the three films, O2, a co-production between the three Baltic states and Finland directed by Margus Paju, will be a period spy thriller taking us back to the days before World War II, and more precisely to the year 1939. The budget being over 2 million euro, O2 showed convincing production value and a fresh insight into a period that has rarely been described previously.

Two of the three Latvian projects were by first time filmmakers: the Eastern Western Wild East is set to be directed by Swedish-born Matiss Kaza, while family drama The Pit [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] will introduces a new talent in Dace Pūce. Meanwhile, acclaimed arthouse director Laila Pakalniņa presented a characteristically out-there project called In the Mirror [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Laila Pakalniņa
scheda film], apparently constructed in its entirety from selfie shots (read article).

Lithuanian project People We Know are Confused [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], by Tomas Smulkis, will be a drama revolving around three people trying to find themselves in interconnected stories. Andrius Blazevicius, whose feature debut The Saint [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Andrius Blazevicius
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intervista: Andrius Blaževičius
scheda film], which will look into psychic problems via a young female protagonist.

Finally, Finland introduced Ulla Heikkilä's Eden [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ulla Heikkilä
scheda film], a coming-of-age drama comedy taking place in a Protestant Confirmation camp, and Pamela Tola's Ladies of Steel [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Pamela Tola
scheda film], a senior comedy about a gang of older ladies refusing to go out with a whimper and causing chaos wherever they go (read interview with the director).

Some of these projects were among the winning titles of the edition (read news).

Here is the full list of Baltic Event Works in Progress projects:

Kids of the Night - Priit Pääsuke
Production company: Alexandra Film (Estonia)

O2 - Margus Paju
Production company: Nafta Films (Estonia), Taska Film (Estonia), Solar Films (Finland), Film Angels (Latvia), In Script (Lithuania).

On the Water [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Peeter Simm
scheda film] - Peeter Simm
Production company: Filmivabrik (Estonia)

In the Mirror [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Laila Pakalniņa
scheda film] - Laila Pakalniņa
Production company: Hargla Company (Latvia), Just a Moment (Lithuania)

The Pit [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] - Dace Pūce
Production company: Marana Productions (Latvia)

Wild East - Matiss Kaza
Production company: Fenixfilm (Latvia), Deep Sea Studios (Latvia), AVB Production (Sweden)

People We Know are Confused [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] - Tomas Smulkis
Production company: Just a Moment (Lithuania)

Runner [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Andrius Blaževičius
scheda film] - Andrius Blazevicius
Production company: M-Films (Lithuania), Bionaut Films (Czech Republic).

Eden [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ulla Heikkilä
scheda film] - Ulla Heikkilä
Production company: Tekele Productions (Finland)

Ladies of Steel [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Pamela Tola
scheda film] - Pamela Tola
Production company: Helsinki-Filmi (Finland)