26th Festival in Pärnu

Legendary Estonian documentarian, artist, politician etc. Mark Soosaar lives in Pärnu at the Baltic Sea, and has since 1987 been, he calls himself so, “the chief” of Pärnu Int. Documentary Film Festival, the oldest film festival in Estonia. According to the website, “the aim of the festival in general is to support cultural survival of peoples. Only documentary films of high value and quality, recording human activities in social, historical or ecological context are accepted for competition screenings.”

This year´s festival starts July 2nd and has indeed a programme of high value, and many awards to distribute at the Museum of New Art on July 8th.

But that is only part of the festival, that travels to other Estonian towns until July 22nd, and includes the broadcast of six documentaries on Estonian public television, with the tv-audience voting for the best of these films on the last night. Great initiative!

Among the films at the festival are Michal Marczak’s “At the Edge of Russia”, “Vivan las Antipodas” by Kossakovsky, “Ballroom Dancer” by Andreas Koefoed and Christian Bonke, “La Machina” (photo) by Thierry Paladino – and in the Estonian competition new high quality films like “New World” by Jaan Tootsen, “The Russians on Crow Island” by Sulev Keedus and “Working Title: Wunderkind” by Marianna Kaat, all films that you will see on the festival circuit in the coming year.

http://www.chaplin.ee/filmfestival/industry.htm

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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