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The Snow Queen (Lumekuninganna) F-Seitse Estonia Director Marko Raat Producer Kaie-Ene Rääk 26 • NPP 2008 Synopsis A winter fairy tale for adults. Beautiful, cold and fatal. Jasper, a 14-year-old teenage boy, falls in love with an older woman, whom he meets while roaming the streets of the city at night. The woman invites him to her place – she lives in an ice villa, which is under construction. She has cancer, but the boy doesn’t know that. She believes the proliferation of cancer cells can be stopped by keeping her body cold. In love, the boy wants to stay with the woman while the villa is being built. She knows their relationship has fatal consequences for the boy, and tries to suppress both of their feelings. But Jasper’s presence becomes more and more important to her in terms of human closeness. The woman’s body temperature keeps falling. She should be dead already but, to the amazement of doctors, claims to be gradually feeling better. Jasper’s love and desire grow into deep and uncontrollable feelings for the woman. In a moment of jealousy, he drowns Gunnar, the contractor for the ice villa. She realises then that Jasper is not a child any more and that there is no way back for him into the world of normal warm people. His genuine affection sparks the last hope of life in her, and a deep love in him - the first and last love of his life. Director’s statement What kind of movie - A love story. Love is a commitment, a mania, an excuse that smothers everything trivial. Love provides a rich soil for misunderstandings. Great love rarely fits in with the practical world. Lovers have to build entire worlds from the ground up. In this movie, they do so despite fatal disease, cold and social taboos. Directions for developing the script - Why does the woman need the boy in the beginning She gets a hint from a Sami guru that she needs to find a young man with red hair and sacrifice him to ‘The Cold’. The woman says to the boy’s parents (without Jasper knowing), that she doesn’t have children and wants Jasper to inherit her money. This explains their doublefaced passivity. Villagers and the builders start to blackmail the woman. This will open up the woman’s background and past, bringing more of everyday life into the film. The woman and the boy will go on a trip - but the road ends: it isn’t possible to go further north. The character of Gunnar and others will be developed in greater depth. Development of main characters - At the beginning, the woman will be cool and reserved, ignoring and totally controlling her inner human side. By the end, she will be hurt and humiliated physically, but emotionally open: ‘happy, free and lazy’ - and content with herself. The boy will be a simple and slightly childish, irresponsible teenager with the usual network of parents, school and girlfriend. By the end, through an intense and special relationship, he has developed into a passionate grown-up who has learned to be responsible. Thanks to love, he is able to choose. Visual side - Psychologically exact and intimate. Scenes of attention, dedication, trust and hurt. Love as an irritating game, making the lovers dependent and happy at the same time. In love, there are no rest periods. Pure and bright. Frozen, intact beauty at the beginning, later melting into a home for two people, more and more dirty, warm and cosy.
Director Marko Raat Producer Kaie-Ene Rääk Co-producer Knut Skoglund (Norway) Writer Marko Raat Based on an original story Language Estonian Genre Drama Format 35mm, CinemaScope A charismatic 40-year-old woman lures a teenage boy into coming with her to an ice villa where she lives as a recluse, freezing her body to stop the proliferation of cancer cells. She believes she has to break a young boy’s heart if she is to survive. Running time 100 mins Target audience 14-plus Budget € 1,100,000 Cast tbc Director Marko Raat Born in 1973, Marko Raat graduated from Tallinn University, where he studied directing. He has made short films, documentaries and television programmes; written film reviews; participated in various art projects; and directed plays. Feature films include: Agent Wild Duck (Agent Sinikael, 2002; winner of the Estonian Critics Award; the Estonian Cultural Endowment Award; and the Estonian National Culture Foundation Award for Best Debut. Festivals: Stockholm, Geneva). The Knife (Nuga, 2007; winner of the Estonian Endowment Award for Best Feature Film; Special Prize, Deboshir Film – Pure Dreams X Festival, Saint Petersburg, 2007). Production company F-Seitse F-Seitse is an independent production company founded in 1998 by Kaie-Ene Rääk and six other Estonian film-makers. Since then, the company has produced 20 creative documentaries, two feature films and several television series. F-Seitse has had different international co-operation projects supported by the Estonian Film Foundation, the Jan Vrijman Fund (Netherlands), Jerusalem Production (UK), the Hubert Bals Fund (Netherlands) and the EU. The company’s films have received awards from the Estonian Cultural Endowment, been shown at international film festivals and won various prizes. Kaie-Ene Rääk started as a producer in 2002 with Somnambuul, directed by Sulev Keedus. The film was shown at 25 international film festivals, including Rotterdam, Seattle, Haifa, Göteborg, Karlovy Vary and Melbourne. Current status In pre-production. Aims at the NPP To find a co-producer and an international distributor. Sound, music, final mix and lab are available. Contact Kaie-Ene Rääk F-Seitse Koidu 17-1 10137 Tallinn Estonia Tel: (372) 601 5983 Mobile: (372) 5648 8902 Fax: (372) 601 5982 kaie@fseitse.ee www.fseitse.ee NPP 2008 • 27
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Page 46: Index English titles, original titl

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