lifThe Estonian Film Institute, the country’s film agency, has earmarked €3 million for new productions so far this year. The first slate of funding, announced back in February, awarded over €2 million in production and minority co-production grants. In particular, two projects received the grants of the biggest magnitude (€665,000 each) – namely, Rainer Sarnet’s comedy The Invisible Fight [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], produced by Homeless Bob Productions and other Serbian and Taiwanese partners, and Elmo Nüganen’s first instalment in the period-drama trilogy Melchior The Apothecary, staged by local firms Taska Film, Nafta Films and Apollo Film Productions in co-operation with Latvian and German partners Film Angels Productions and Maze Pictures.

In the summer, one extraordinary call for funding for the majority production of features was published by the institute, and the entire allocated amount (€450,000) was awarded to Tanel Toom’s sophomore film, Cerberus, which is being produced by Ivo Felt for Tallinn-based outfit Allfilm. Toom won the Student Academy Award for Honorary Foreign Film in 2010 with his graduation short, The Confession, and released his debut feature, Truth and Justice [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], last year.

Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of the September round of minority co-production bursaries include Natalya Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov’s fiction film Captain Volkonogov Escaped (€120,000, staged by Homeless Bob Productions along with Russian and French partners Look-Film, Place of Power and Kinovista), Alice Troughton’s fiction film Juhendaja (€94,000, a Nafta Films production with undisclosed foreign partners), Giedre Zickyte’s documentary Irena (€30,000, produced by Allfilm in co-operation with Lithuanian and German partners Moonmakers and Saxonia Entertainment), Renato Borrayo Serrano’s documentary Life of Ivanna [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (€30,000, produced by Baltic Film Productions alongside Finnish, Norwegian and Russian partners Illume OY Company, Ten Thousand Images AS and Ethnofund) and Francis Lau’s fiction title Borderland (€90,000, staged by Tallifornia with Singaporean and Filipino partners Silver Media Group and Ursa Studios).

The body’s next funding decisions will be announced in early 2021.