The movie Dual brought Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul to Tampere – now the collaboration created a new competition for the Tampere Film Festival
The Tampere Film Festival will have a new international Generation XYZ competition in 2021 in cooperation with the US production company XYZ Films. Making of the company’s international Dual movie, starring Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul, has just ended in Tampere. One of the partners in the new competition is also the Tampere Region European Capital of Culture bid.
“We looked forward to finding and supporting a new generation of visionary filmmakers together with the Tampere Film Festival,” commented Aram Tertzakian, one of the founders of XYZ. “Throughout time, short films have served as a springboard for great directors like Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola and Taika Waitit.”
The registration for the Generation XYZ competition for short genre films can be found through FilmFreeway from 15 December 2020 to 15 January 2021. In the competition, genre film means excitement, horror, action, sci-fi and fantasy films. Read more about the instructions and rules of the competition here.
Film Tampere, the City of Tampere, the Tampere Capital of Culture bid and APFI – Audiovisual Producers Finland are also partners in the competition. The idea for the competition originally came from Film Tampere.
“The collaboration with XYZ Films went well in Dual production and it was decided to deepen the collaboration. We share a common passion for the future development of the industry, ”says Ilkka Rahkonen, Film Tampere’s Program Director.
Tampere Film Festival is a member of the European Film Academy’s Short Matters! festival network and Academy Award® -short films qualifying festival. It is also a BAFTA recognised short film festival. If short film have been screened or accepted into the festival, it may be eligible for a BAFTA. Tampere Film Festival is ranked amongst the top three most important short film festivals in the world.
Dual with Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul
The Tampere-filmed sci-fi thriller Dual is the first Hollywood production to be shot entirely in Finland. The production employs about 100 Finnish film professionals. The income impact of production in Finland and Tampere is calculated in millions.
The movie, shot in October-November 2020 in Tampere, starred Karen Gillan. Gillan has starred in the film Oculus (2013), and played the lead in the ABC/Hulu series Selfie (2014). She then received widespread recognition for portraying Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films (2014–present), and for portraying Ruby Roundhouse in the Jumanji film series (2017–present) like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
Other star was Aaron Paul, who is best known for portraying Jesse Pinkman in the AMC series Breaking Bad (2008–2013), for which he won several awards. Also Beulah Koale, who has been seen in the Hawaii 5-0 series, starred in this movie. Film director-screenwriter Riley Stearns co-produces the film with XYZ Films line Lee Kim.
The visit of Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul raised some media hype in Finland, Hollywood stars are not so often seen in the streets of Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland. For example the biggest tabloid in Finland, Iltasanomat, made a big story about the experiences of Karen Gillan in Finland. Karen Gillan herself posted on Instagram for example about Finland. Finnish Broadcasting Corporation YLE made a story about Karen Gillan training in Finland. One bar promised Aaron Paul free drinks and meals, and that gave this bar a whole lot of publicity when Aaron Paul made it famous in Instagram (picture).
More information about the production in Hollywood Reporter or Screendaily.
Tampere for European Capital of Culture
Tampere and 19 municipalities of Pirkanmaa are applying for the title of European Capital of Culture for 2026.
In summary, the application process proceeds as follows:
- To date, pre-selection of candidate cities has taken place. The first meeting of the International European Capital of Culture 2026 panel was held on June 16 and June 23–24, 2020 at Helsinki Central Library Oodi, Helsinki.
- The jury evaluated the applications of Oulu, Savonlinna and Tampere and heard the presentations of the cities. The jury’s recommendation was that all three cities proceed to the second and decisive round.
- Next is the time for further development of applications. The cities have until April 23, 2021 to develop and refine their applications. The development work is based on the jury’s feedback on the application books.
- And finally, the European Capital of Culture for 2026 will be chosen at the jury meeting on June 2, 2021 in Helsinki.
- There are still many years to go, but here are some tips how you stay on the map in various stages of the bid.
Follow us on Facebook. The Capital of Culture search page on Facebook is tampereregion2026. Join the crowd and like and follow our page. There we report the latest situations and also share other news about Tampere and Pirkanmaa. Most of the updates are bilingual, written in finnish and english.
Follow us on Twitter. On Twitter we put news first in a concise format. Our Twitter page is @Tampere2026Team. Part of the updates are written both in finnish and english.
Follow us on Instagram. We put fun moods and nice tips from Pirkanmaa on Instagram. We update our instance account TampereRegion2026 mostly in English, because we also have an international audience.
Use our hashtag. Our hashtag is #TampereRegion2026. For example, when you tweet something about Pirkanmaa culture, it would be great if our tags were included, thank you!
Subscribe to the newsletter. The Capital of Culture bid sends a newsletter to those interested about 1-2 times a month. You can order it from this link. Sorry, newsletter is only in finnish.
Read our website. You are currently reading the bid website https://tampereregion2026.fi/en/. Basically, the site contains all the information about the bid.
What exactly is this whole search project about? The answer to this can be found, for example, on our About page.