Luiza Calagian's Debut 'Arrow for a Stone Heart' Heads to Tallinn
Luiza Calagian's Debut 'Arrow for a Stone Heart' Heads to Tallinn
Luiza Calagian's first feature film, Arrow for a Stone Heart, has its world premiere on Tuesday, 17 November, in the Rebels with a Cause competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter reported the news on 15 November.
Calagian wrote, directed and shot the film herself. She co-wrote the script with Jera Rete and shared the editing with a second editor. The Portuguese title is Flecha para Um Coração de Pedra.
The film was made in collaboration with the local Guaraní Indigenous community. The trade paper describes it as a poetic hybrid, a mix of documentary and fiction that blurs the line between recording real life and staging it.
Vinicius Toro and Sabrina Zimmermann produce the film, with Bruno Cucio as executive producer. Utopia Docs will handle distribution and world sales. World sales is the work of selling a film to cinemas and broadcasters in other countries, and it is often settled at festivals like this one.
That is one reason festivals matter. Tallinn works as a marketplace as well as a showcase, where sales companies and buyers meet and decide which films travel further. Those decisions can take a year or more to reach a screen.
The festival itself is marking its 30th edition. Its opening night took place at Tallinn's Alexela Concert Hall, and the organisers, Tallinn Black Nights (PÖFF), say the event also includes a programme called Standing with Ukraine, which features Ukrainian cinema.
At the opening, Priit Pärn, Sven Grünberg and Hilmar Oddsson received Lifetime Achievement Awards. The Bruno O'Ya Scholarship for Young Film Actors went to Jarmo Reha.
Other guests have already been in town. Pavel Talankin, who co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, met audiences in Tallinn on 12 November, according to PÖFF. The festival also invited the two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Christopher Hampton to its Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event for a conversation about turning stage plays into films.
For Calagian, the premiere is the first time her debut will meet a festival audience. The rest of its path, including any deals with buyers beyond the festival, will depend on what happens in the weeks ahead.
