‘Yalda’ to race up to Estonia

Masoud Bakhshi’s acclaimed narrative ‘Yalda’ has been scheduled in contention at two seasonal editions of the 2020 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia.

Also written by Bakhshi, ‘Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness’ will be screened in both summer and autumn editions of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which will be held in August and November.

The summer edition of the Estonian film event is called Tartuff - Tartu Love Film Festival which is an outdoor film festival taking place in the heart of the Tartu Old Town, Estonia on August 10-15, 2020. The festival screens a diverse selection of genre and documentary films.

Following its summer screening, ‘Yalda’ will also premiere at the 24th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, or PÖFF, which will take place from 13th - 29th November 2020 in Estonian cities of Tallinn, Tartu, Narva and Kohtla-Järve.

‘Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness’, a captivating drama co-produced with Luxembourg's Amour Fou and awarded in Sundance Film Festival, follows a young Iranian woman sentenced to death and seeking to obtain forgiveness from her accusers via a popular reality TV show.

‘Yalda’ stars Behnaz Jafari and Faqiheh Soltani among others.

The 2019 production has been already honored with the Grand Jury Award at the 2020 International Dramatic Film at Sundance Film Festival in the US.  

So far, Bakhshi’s 89-min ‘Yalda’ has gone on screen at the 15th Panorama of Maghreb and Middle Eastern Cinemas in France, the 55th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic, the 3rd PyeongChang International Peace Film Festival (PIPFF) in South Korea, the 6th Iranian Film Festival of Zurich in Switzerland as well as the 2020 Mediterranean Film Festival Split in Croatia.

Recently, the flick won the Special Mention for best screenplay at the 24th Sofia Int’l Film Festival (SIFF) in Bulgaria.  

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival is an annual film festival held since 1997 in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia.

With over 500 films, short films and animations around 1400 attending film professionals and journalists and attendance of more than 90,000, the event is the largest annual cultural event in Estonia.

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MM/FM