Estonian movie 'At Your Service' bags Cannes Film Festival prize
Young Estonian director German Golub's under-production film "Teie teenistuses" ("At Your Service") has won an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
The movie was honored by Marché du Film, the world's largest film market, winning one of three Goes to Cannes awards, worth €15,000.
The "Goes to Cannes" category aims to highlight film projects from young talented auteurs and which are currently in post-production. These can then be noticed more by sales agents, distributors, and festival programmers, helping pave their way to the international market.
In "At Your Service," Helen, an Estonian police officer working in a small town close to the Russian border, finds herself between a rock and a hard place after a family member commits a crime, leaving her to have to decide between saving her family, her career, and herself. Helen, played by Estonian actor Piret Krumm (pictured), opts in the end to try to do all three.
"At Your Service" is set to premiere in cinemas early next year, and is being produced by Stellar Film.
It is one of five new movies presented to Cannes by the PÖFF film festival, along with Eeva Mägi's documentary "Mo Hunt," Luxembourg director Stephen Korytko's black comedy "Dead Dad Girl", Dutch director Edson da Conceição's drama "Lost Son", and Spanish director Daniel Romero Bueno's thriller "The Daughters." The latter also received recognition in Cannes in winning a €10,000 prize from film studio and distributor Sideral Cinema.
This is the first time that PÖFF projects have been recognized in Cannes, and the movies showcased were selected via an international competition.
A total of 34 films took part in the Goes to Cannes program, representing five specially invited film festivals and the two largest film markets in their respective regions. Alongside PÖFF, film festivals from Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Adelaide, and, for the first time, the African Film Festival held in Nigeria, were represented in the "Goes to" competition, along with the Hong Kong – Asia Film Financing Forum and Ventana Sur, which represents the Latin American film industry.
One of the most well known movies from Golub, 33, is "Our Erika" ("Meie Erika"), a sports biopic which tells the story of Erika Salumäe, who won gold in track cycling at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, at a time when Estonia was still under Soviet occupation, and again four years later in Barcelona – by which time Estonia had become an independent country.
This year's Cannes Film Festival runs until Saturday.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Neit-Eerik Nestor
