In the lead-up to its 20^th anniversary edition, the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (11-27 November) has announced the titles selected for its First Features Competition. The section, dedicated to showcasing emerging filmmakers, will, this year, feature 13 world and international premieres.

The European titles that will be having their world premiere are Stefano Amatucci’s Caina [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Stefano Amatucci
scheda film] (Italy), a tale about a morally dystopian Europe, in which the bodies of dead refugees that are washed ashore have become an industrial problem for the local authorities and a business for those responsible for their disposal, and Tereza Kotyk’s Home Is Here [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Tereza Kotyk
scheda film] (Austria), the story of a Viennese teenager who gains access to a posh and private house that she starts secretly visiting, slowly making changes to its owner’s possessions and life. The other films that will be having their world premieres are Kira Kovalenka’s portrait of the life of an Abhkazian woman, Sofichka (Russia), Hadi Ghandour’s grown-up coming-of-age tale of a travelling salesman, The Traveller [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Hadi Ghandour
scheda film] (Lebanon/France) and Navid Danesh’s Duet (Iran), a study of two couples’ relationships, whose past is intertwined.

As for the international premieres, the festival will screen three European titles. Documentary filmmaker Lidia Terki’s first fiction film, Paris La Blanche [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Lidia Terki
scheda film] (France), tells the story of a 70-year-old woman who decides to follow her husband’s trail to France, 40 years after his departure from Algeria. Slovak producer Michal Kollár delivers his first film as a director, The Red Captain (Slovakia/Czech Republic/Poland), a bold crime thriller set during the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union in Bratislava that tackles Czechoslovachia's dissolution. Lastly, The White King [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (United Kingdom), directed by Alex Helfrecht and Jörg Tittel, adapts the acclaimed Hungarian novel of the same name to study the mechanisms of subjugation in totalitarian societies, through a dystopian dictatorship that worships rurality, violence and hard labour.

The section is rounded off by Wedding Dance (Turkey) by Çiğdem Sezgin, a study of gender roles, relationships and marriages in contemporary Turkey, The Cockroach (Chile) by Francisco Hevia and Vinko Tomicic, Gentle Breath (Colombia) by Augusto Sandino, Holy Biker (Brazil) by Homero Olivetto and Man With the Binoculars (India) by Rima Das.