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With Baltic shows growing bigger and bolder and producers looking for more international collaborators, local creators reach for original stories and established IPs, delivering period dramas and timely satires. However, crime shows, whether contemporary – like this year’s Berlinale Series Market Selects “My Dear Mother” – or set in the 19th century, still take the crown. Or at least the top hat.

“Melchior the Apothecary”

Creators: Indrek Hargla, Elmo Nüganen, Olle Mirme

Director: Elmo Nüganen

Based on popular crime series books by Indrek Hargla – about an apothecary who heals the sick and solves mysteries – the show is set in medieval Tallinn. Shot as a trilogy, which was a box-office success in Estonia, it’s sold by Global Screen as a miniseries. It features Märten Metsaviir and Maarja Johanna Mägi, who was chosen as one of Berlinale’s Shooting Stars and will be next seen in the Finnish remake of “Cold Feet.

“EastEnders” star Michelle Collins is making the leap from acting to production, and hopes to champion “working-class voices” in her projects.

During a panel at Content London on Thursday, Collins discussed the ins and outs of making the career transition alongside Sir Lenny Henry, Banijay U.K. CEO Patrick Holland, Marta Dusseldorp, Alexandra Rapaport, Gabija Siurbyte, Calle Jansson and Ernestas Jankauskas. Collins is currently back on BBC soap “EastEnders” as Cindy Beale, who was resurrected from the dead after 25 years, but said she recently went through a tough time in her career.

“I went to ‘EastEnders’ when I was 26, I stayed for 10 years and then I left and I was very successful. Had a very good agent, had lots of leading roles on primetime TV,” Collins said. “And then suddenly, as women who are actresses know, it kind of stopped. It’s weird. You don’t know when it does,...

When the European Film Market kicks off in Berlin on Feb. 16, the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will share the stage as the EFM’s joint Countries in Focus. The showcase, which is supported by the Estonian Film Institute, the National Film Center of Latvia and the Lithuanian Film Center, will offer a range of events within the framework of the EFM, along with a selection of market premieres and screenings of Baltic films already making waves on the festival circuit. Twelve up-and-coming Baltic producers will also be presented to the international industry during a happy hour on Feb. 17 in the Gropius Bas.

Here’s a selection of Baltic buzz titles that the region’s top producers will be taking to Berlin:

Last Sentinel

Director: Tanel Toom

Producers: Ben Pullen, Ivo Felt, Jörg Bundschuh, Pippa Cross, Matthew James Wilkinson

Kate Bosworth stars in this sci-fi thriller from...

Also world premiering is HBO Max series ‘Spy/Master’ and Indian drama ‘Roar’

Italian crime drama The Good Mothers is among the seven titles selected for Berlinale (February 16-26) Series strand.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The Disney+ series is directed by the UK’s Julian Jarrold, whose credits include Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane and Brideshead Revisted, and Italian filmmaker Elisa Amoruso. The Good Mothers is a UK-Italy co-production and follows three women trying to bring down the Italian mafia.

The first two episodes of the six-part series is one of five series world premiering at Berlinale.

These...

Titles are split between Coming Soon and Industry Screenings.

Meeting Point - Vilnius, the industry strand of Vilnius International Film Festival, has expanded its selection for its 2021 online event, confirming 32 projects today.

The projects are selected across two strands: 24 are in the Coming Soon pitching selection, consisting of 12 fiction features and 12 documentaries; with a further four of each in the Industry Screenings.

Some 23 countries are represented among the titles, including Maysoon Pachachi’s fiction feature Our River… Our Sky, a co-production between the UK, France, Germany, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, in the main Coming Soon strand.

Further sections of...

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.

Quota

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 Morning Herald, that is just one of two parts of a government plan to level the regulatory playing field between streamers and traditional free-to-air networks in Australia, which are struggling in the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government is also considering the removal of annual broadcast spectrum taxes for commercial TV networks and replacing them with an entirely new licensing program that could save local broadcasters as much as $12 million Aud ($8.85 million) per year.

Proposed...

Lithuanian writer-director Eglė Vertelytė’s Tasty was named the winner of Screen International’s best pitch award.

The 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has named the winners of its Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event awards.

The industry showcase was held online this year, with the winners announced yesterday (November 26) following a week of online presentations and networking with around 850 delegates.

Lithuanian writer-director Eglė Vertelytė’s second feature film Tasty was named the winner of Screen International’s best pitch award, which guarantees coverage on Screen throughout the project’s lifecycle, at the Baltic Event Co-Production Market.

The €700,000 comedy focuses on two...

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. The Diana Interview: The Truth Behind The Scandal will examine the fallout and provide further revelations from Freedom of Information requests and royal insiders. The executive producer is Dan Chambers, the producer is Lesley Davies and the director is Andy Webb. It was commissioned for Channel 4 by Shaminder Nahal.

Black Nights Industry Winners

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has named the winners of its Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event program. The Midpoint...

A total of 18 films will be showcased, including a €3m historical feature set in medieval Estonia.

The projects selected for Tallinn Black Nights’ industry showcase have been revealed, including a €3m adventure film set in medieval Estonia.

Scroll down for full list of projects

This year’s Industry@Tallinn and Baltic Event will take place entirely online and will spotlight 18 films seeking sales agents or festivals for international premieres. The projects will be presented on November 24.

Both the Baltic Event, showcasing Baltic and Finnish projects, and International Works in Progress compete for the same awards: the Post Production Award worth...

Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the leading cinema event in Central and Eastern Europe, has unveiled the projects that will be showcased during the online edition of its industry program, Eastern Promises.

Eastern Promises will feature a total of 41 film projects, which will be presented as part of its various sections – Works in Progress, First Cut+ Works in Progress, Docs in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch, and Eurimages Lab Project Award. The presentations of projects to industry professionals will take place July 6-8, and the most promising projects will receive awards of the total value of Euros 165,000.

In order to attend the online program, film industry professionals must be registered (click here) by June 22 at the latest.

Works in Progress

The Works in Progress sessions will be presented online on July 6 at 14:00-17:00 Cet and July 7 at 14:00-17:00 Cet.

The Trt prize of 10,000 Eur will be...

Industry showcase to run virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) has unveiled the projects that will be showcased during its Eastern Promises industry strand, which is taking place online for the first time due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some 41 film projects will be presented across industry strands: Works in Progress; First Cut+ Works in Progress; Docs in Progress; Works in Development - Feature Launch; and Eurimages Lab Project Award.

Projects will be presented to industry across three days, from July 8, with the most promising titles receiving awards worth a total of €165,000.

Kviff announced in...

The festival, held in the French Alps, will have a timely ecological angle for the first time.

The Les Arcs Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 11th edition, which will unfold in the French Alps Dec 14-21, with a timely ecological angle for the first time.

Artistic director Frédéric Boyer has selected 120 films, which will play across six sections, including the Competition, Playtime, Hauteur and Avant-Premieres sidebars. Some 22,000 public and professional attendees are expected to attend in line with 2018.

Dutch actor-turned-director Halina Reijn’s psychological thriller Instinct, Fyzal Boulifa’s UK tragic female friendship tale Lynn + Lucy and...

Eleven films to play in competition.

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (November 16 – December 2) has added twelve titles to its First Feature Competition.

Among the new entries are Spanish director Victor Cabaco’s A March To Remember, a 1976-set thriller following a radio journalist during a workers’ strike in a provincial capital.

From India is Hello Arsi, chronicling the day in the life of two strangers who have met on a highway and go on to share a car ride and conversation. Director Sambit Mohanty passed away last year soon after shooting completed.

Eleven of the new titles are in competition,...

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has announced the first seven titles of the films that will compete in this year's First Feature Competition - four of which are world premieres.

The films include five from across Europe, one from Japan one from Iran. Among the world premieres is Ernestas Jankauskas' Sasha Was Here, a Lithuanian-Finnish co-production set over the course of a day in which a young couple spend time with a child they are potentially going to adopt in unexpected circumstances. Jankauskas has already enjoyed a lengthy career as a second unit and assistant director and won a Silver Crane at the Lithuanian Film Awards for his short film The Queen Of England Stole My Parents.

Miha Mazzini's Erased - a Slovenia-Croatia-Serbia co-production - will also have its world premiere at the festival. Mazzini's film - which featured in San Sebastian's non-hegemonic...

Ida producer Opus Film and distributors Against Gravity and Next Film were among the winners at the 8th Polish Film Institute Awards.

The awards were presented at a gala ceremony last night during the Gdynia Film Festival (Sept 14-29).

Lodz-based Opus Film and the Acme PR agency won the prize for ¨International Promotion of Polish Cinema¨ for its Oscar campaign for Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, which won Best Foreign-Language Film at the Academy Awards.

Next Film was recognised for its distribution of Jan Komasa’s Warsaw Uprising and Lukasz Palkowski’s Gods, the big winner at last year’s Gdynia Film Festival with admissions topping 2.2 million in Polish cinemas.

Against Gravity received the award for ¨Distribution of a Non-Commercial Foreign Film in Poland¨ for its release of Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Oscar-nominated Leviathan.

In addition, the 41st Film Summer in Insk beat off competition from the 5th American Film Festival in Wroclaw and the 21st Nationwide...