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NAFTA FILMS

Estonia

Contact

ESKO RIPS

Producer, CEO

Company Profile

Nafta Films was founded in 2009 and has become one of the largest production companies in the Estonia, producing audiovisual content of all forms: films, TV productions and commercials. Nafta Films has access to a network of hundreds of creative professionals in Northern Europe and Baltic states that can be employed on a project basis.

 

In 2015, Nafta produced its first feature length film — THE SECRET SOCIETY SOUPTOWN. The film was a box office hit and quickly became Estonia's most watched family film. In 2020, Nafta came out with two features — a II World War spy thriller O2 (DAWN OF WAR) and ERNA AT WAR, a war drama produced in co-operation with Danish production house Nimbus Film. Nafta’s most recent co-production CONFERENCE premiered in Venice Film Festival in 2020. In April, 2022, the first film of the 3-part feature film series MELCHIOR THE APOTHECARY premiered theatrically, with the rest of the trilogy following in the same year.

 

Commercially, Nafta Films' biggest clients include the likes of Volkswagen, Lidl, Ferrero, Mercedes, Samsung, HP, Renault, Porche, and many more. Although the bulk of their commercial work is done for Germany and the UK, Nafta has also done productions for clients from the US, Mexico, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, France, Russia and many others. Nafta also has the honour of being the only company from the Baltics to represent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Lapland in GPN (Global Production Network).

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Company Highlights

DAWN OF WAR / O2  2020

Genre:             Spy thriller

Director:         Margus Paju

Screenplay:    Tiit Aleksejev, Tom Abrams, Eriikka Etholén Paju, Olle Mirme

Cast:                Priit Võigemast, Kaspars Znotinš, Agnese Cīrule, Doris Tislar, Rein Oja, Elmo Nüganen, Johan Kristjan Aimla,                                Sampo Sarkola, Ieva Andrejevaitè, Valentin Novopolskij

 

August 1939, the last days before the outbreak of World War II. Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Third Reich shock the world by signing a military alliance pact. At that very moment in Estonia, a small country neighbouring Russia, the head of the counter-Soviet Intelligence is murdered. A suspicion for a mole in their ranks closes down the unit and an intelligence officer Feliks Kangur is assigned with catching the traitor. When Germany and the Soviet Union invade Poland, Feliks finds out that the Red Army has kicked off a covert operation to annex Estonia next. Haunted by a tragic love story, Felix has to figure out if there is anything left for him to save…

ERNA AT WAR  2020

Genre:             War Drama

Director:         Henrik Ruben Genz

Screenplay:    Bo Hr. Hansen, Henrik Ruben Genz

Cast:               Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Anders W. Berthelsen, Sylvester Byder

The year is 1918. The Great War is raging through Europe while Erna Jensen tends to her ordinary, tranquil life at home in Bramstrup where she lives with her simple-minded son, Kalle. That is until the day when everything changes as the village constable Meier shows up to conscript Kalle for military service for the German Empire of which Southern Jutland, at this time, is a part. Ever since Kalle’s dramatic birth, Erna has promised the Lord that no one should ever be allowed to touch so much as a single hair on the boy’s head and now she has to hand him over to the German war machine. Erna realises that if she is to save Kalle from an uncertain fate in the trenches, she must follow him through thick and thin. As fate would have it she rescues a deserting soldier and the two of them swap clothes and identities. Now disguised as Private Julius Rasmussen, Erna heads towards the front. In her encounter with soldier Anton Seiersen, the blacksmith from Jels, new previously unknown sides are awoken in Erna.

CONFERENCE  2020

Genre:             Drama

Director:         Ivan I. Tverdovskiy

Screenplay:     Ivan I. Tverdovskiy

Cast:                Angeliki Papoulia, Youla Boudali, Christos Passalis

 

Natalia, a nun from a remote Russian monastery, comes to Moscow 17 years after the terror attack in Dubrovka Theatre. She was sent there to organize a memorial evening for the victims of the attack that happened in October 2002. We soon learn that Natalia and her family were the witnesses of the attack. Almost forgotten now by the outside world the organizers and participants of the memorial evening or the Conference (as they were asked to call it official) are made to feel like a burden by the rest of the society. Following the chronology of the events as told by a few participants in the memorial evening we learn the dark details of Natalia’s personal story. CONFERENCE is the story of one fragile family against the backdrop of one of the major tragedies of the 21st century in Russian history. The film is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Nord - Ost siege that took place at Dubrovka Theatre on 23 - 26 October 2002, involved 850 hostages and ended with the death of at least 170 people.

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