Tallinn Baltic Event: New Movie From Darko Lungulov and Ernestas Jankauskas, Plus Titles Directed by Rising Talents Josh Trigg, Marina Palacio and Many More — SkimNews
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- The Baltic Event selected 16 projects for its 2025 Works in Progress slate, chosen from more than 100 submissions spanning Southeast/Central Europe, Latin America, and Spain, with co-managers Kärt Väinola and Helen Räim calling the final cut "a great blend of different genres."
- For the first time, all 16 projects will be pitched the same day — Thursday November 19 in the morning and early afternoon — leaving filmmakers more time to meet and forge partnerships before the November 20 closing ceremony.
- Josh Trigg, the Bafta-nominated Welsh director of "Satu-Year of the Rabbit," was personally invited by Naomi Kawase to direct Japanese-language film "Leopard Spots," shot in 16mm in a small Nara factory town.
- Saulius Baradinskas, whose short "Techno Mama" competed for the Venice Golden Lion, debuts with "Concrete Music," a 1990s post-Soviet Lithuania crime drama-musical co-produced by Italy's Andrea Gori (Lumen Films).
- Marina Palacio brings "And Thus It Will Go On," a hybrid film produced by Basque outfit Gariza Films and winner of "most promising project" at the 2022 Baltic Event Script Pool, marking the Basque region's first selection.
- Works in progress co-managers identified parent-child relationships, mortality and loss — "treated with rare lightness in several films" — as through-lines, surfacing in dark comedies "A Midnight Pilgrimage," "Marry Then Die," "Burlaks" and "The Elderly Store."
- Ernestas Jankauskas pitches "The Queen of England Stole My Parents," a feature spinoff of his award-winning short, produced by Dansu Film (co-producer of Netflix's "Clark") and tied to his "Troll Farm" track record.
Why it matters: Compressing 16 pitches into a single Thursday morning (Nov 19) reshapes buyer logistics heading into the Nov 20 closing — sales agents and co-producers now have one concentrated buying window rather than a multi-day schedule. The slate's geographic spread (Basque, Japanese-language, Kyrgyz, Montenegrin) signals Tallinn's push beyond its Baltic core, while Kawase-endorsed Josh Trigg and Venice-debuted Saulius Baradinskas position the Baltic Event as a discovery venue for emerging transcontinental co-productions.
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