08/01/2007

Lege Artis Film has struck a first look deal with Nordisk for the company to handle world sales on Peeter Simm’s Georg [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the biggest production ever made in Estonia.

According to producer Märten Kross, the film, currently in post-production, will first be presented to international buyers at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival. Georg focuses on the artistic and private life of famous Estonian singer Georg Ots (1920-1975), admired in Russia and Finland as much as in his native country.

According to Kross, the project was 10 years in the making and needed 19 rewrites until Mati Põldre & Aleksander Borodjanski signed off the final script. The financing of the film was also complicated, with 11 different partners involved. Kross is producing for Lege Artis Film in co-production with Allfilm in Estonia, the National Film Center in Russia and Matila Röhr Productions in Finland. The period film is set to open first in Tallinn in September 2007, then in Helsinki and in Russia.

Georgis Kross’ first feature film. Son of world-renowned Estonian poet and novelist Jaan Kross, he first worked in real estate, finance and photography before turning to film production. In 2002, Kross joined Lege Artis Film, for whom he produced two documentaries, one of which was Söerikastaja about his father, directed by Simm.

After Georg, Kross will produce another historical film with Simm behind the camera, based on his father’s 1978 novel The Czar’s Madman. The novel, based on true events, is the story of a Livonian nobleman, Timotheus von Bock, who married a peasant Estonian girl to prove everyone that good men are equal before nature. He was imprisoned for being so bold as to talk frankly to the tsar. Kross is looking for Russia and German co-production partners for the project, which is set to start shooting in 2008.