Film circles and virtual Q&A sessions in store for Thursday’s programme

The festival kicked off along with the opening ceremony as well as the atmospheric Själö – Island of Souls screening. The first virtual Tampere Film Festival in history has now officially and ceremonially been declared open! Film screenings are waiting for you on Festhome TV, choose your favourites and enjoy!

Today on Thursday the Industry Programme truly takes off in the festival’s Deal Room event and on the festival’s YouTube channel. For accredited guests there will be panel discussions on the funding of animations as well as on the diversity and new audiences for genre-films. Today’s speakers for the two-day event Script Tampere 2021 are Eeva Putro, the writer of Tove Jansson’s biopic Tove, as well as Ronnie Sandahl, the writer of Borg vs McEnroe and Tigers.

Those that are craving post screening discussions and gatherings will find comfort at Film Club Monroe’s Film Circle which will be held over Zoom on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Film Circle is held in Finnish only. The Film Circle will commence tonight at 9pm with mutual discussions on the Generation XYZ 1 screening. Be sure to watch the screening in advance and join the Film Circle’s Zoom conversation at 9pm. Additional details on the event can be found on Facebook.

Also, the festival has traditionally hosted post screening Q&A sessions where the audience has had the chance to address the directors that are present with questions raised by the films. While interviews with directors are being held in many different formats during the virtual festival, the traditional Q&A sessions will still be organized on Thursday, Friday and Saturday with the directors of the films chosen for the National Competition.

Thursday’s director interviews will take place at 8pm on the festival’s Facebook channel. The event moderated by Liina Härkönen will include the following directors:

• Saara Hakkarainen (Silence, 2020) (National Competition 11)
• Anne Lakanen & Tahvo Hirvonen (Escape, 2020) (National Competition 10)
• Pia Andell (Reconstruction, 2021) (National Competition 10)
• Tatu Pohjanvirta (All Tender Things, 2020) (National Competition 8)
• Sawandi Groskind (Where to Land, 2020) (National Competition 10)
• Iivo Korhonen (Magic Muscle Moments, 2020) (National Competition 8)
• Arttu Nieminen (Luhtahuitti, 2020) (National Competition 9)

Students from the Helsinki Vocational College and Adult Institute Mediastadi interviewed all the directors of the feature-length documentaries chosen for the National Competition. All interviews can be found on our YouTube channel. Also interviews and video messages from the directors of other screenings – such as Generation XYZ and International Competition – have been collected on the festival’s YouTube account.

Don’t forget to vote for your favourite film at the National and International Competition’s audience vote! Voting is open until Saturday 13 March 12 noon (UTC+2:00). All competition films are available to watch at Festhome TV.