Canadian foreign language Oscar nominee “Gabrielle” opened tonight the 17th Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn and Tartu with director Louise Archambault and main actor Alexandre Landry present at the screening in the Estonian capital.
Festival director Tiina Lokk is pleased with this year’s program: “This year’s festival presents an unprecedented number of premieres, high profile film and industry guests and an outstanding selection of films from North America over Europe to Asia. We start on full speed from day one with 40 films and will be showing 255 full length features during two weeks including many premieres and exotic gems.”
The Black Nights FF programmer Helmut Jänes points out that the audience award winning “Gabrielle” from Locarno festival is remarkable both for its story as for the effort of the authors: “Gabrielle’s magic is the complicated choice of actors, emotional story and wonderful music.” Director Louise Archambault elaborates: “The actress playing Gabrielle suffers from the rare Williams syndrome in real life but in spite of that is a great proof in life and on screen of how disabled people are just like everybody else. I wanted to show how otherwise invisible people reach happiness. By choosing to cast people with the syndrome I knew the result might not be perfect but it will be true.” For the main actor Alexandre Landry it was a new experience to work in a situation where he is the “different one”. Both enjoyed the magical bonding moments during the shoot ending up probably as the “Guinness record holder for a film shoot with most hugs”.
The Black Nights sets the focus on the new Armenian film with some very promising stars, the Canadian focus presents Inuit films among others, and the Mexican Bronco program offers some true adrenaline boosts.
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, November 15 – December 1, 2013, is one of the largest and most distinctive film events in the whole Northern Europe featuring three full blown competitions and sub-festivals, along with a fully fledged industry program and co-production market. Industry@Tallinn (Nov 25-29) is a set of film industry oriented events during Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival organised by both the Black Nights Film Festival and Baltic Event.