Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival to take part in Off the Wall Expanded: Across the Wall

Two films from the 2016 programme of the 20th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, taking place on 11-27 November – Caina, part of the First Features Competition and House of Others are among the films that will tour six European countries in order to promote European cinema and to debate the current state of the continent. 

Six countries - Estonia, Spain, Austria, Italy, Portugal and France – cross the borders and go together in the project Off the Wall Expanded to increase the visibility and accessibility of new and emerging European film-makers. Through the programme Across the Line the six partners (all members of the EU) with the support of the Creative Europe agency, give voice to up and coming European directors for them to be heard beyond festivals and, above all, beyond borders.

Off the Wall Expanded is the continuation of the programme Off the Wall that visited over 20 cities in seven different countries in Europe and America during 2014 and 2015. The discourse and the general view of Europe back then was quite different with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collective thrill around a united Europe. The programme of Across the Line takes us to the Europe of today. A new Europe in which borders are built up again and where the common dream is under threat.

The program Across the Line includes, among others, films like Europa She Loves(Switzerland and Germany), which was filmed in four different European cities and it premiered at the Berlinale. Caina, having a world premiere at Tallinn Black Nights is an Italian film about a woman who picks up bodies of immigrants washed up on shore. Park is a co-production between Greece and Poland, in which young people hang around in the modern ruins from the Olympic city of Athens. It has just won the award for young creators at the Festival of San Sebastian. House of Others (Georgian entry for the Beset Foreign Film Academy Award) presents a story of a family returning home, to the rubbles of war, establishing a new house. Soon they will understand that war is not only a physical thing you can left behind, it could stay inside human being.

Following Xavier Garcia Puerto, coordinator and one of the curators of the project: “the main idea is to present films that engages and challenge the audience across frontiers in order take the debate on the new Europe to society and, in this way, to make new film-makers visible and accessible”.

The debate is brought to society for the first time this November 2016 both in Tarragona at the Spanish film festival, REC, who is also the leader of this collective European project, as well as in Estonia at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Next year, in March, the films will be at LET'S CEE Film Festival in Vienna, with the support of Cineplexx International. During April 2017, Across the Line will travel around in Italy starting in Rome in the hands of EXIT Med!a. Later next year, in June, Portugal hosts the programme during the Fest - New Directors | New Films Festival. In France, Kino Visegrad prepares activities with films from the program during the whole year. Our activities will also be celebrated in other cities and countries during 2017.

For more information: http://www.offthewallproject.eu/across-the-line/