The Haapsalu horror and fantasy film festival dusts off Rasmus Merivoo’s film “Buratino”.
“This punk-trash musical, full of explosions and songs, has unfortunately sunk into oblivion,” stated Helmut Jänes, head of HÕFF.
The film, which was shot in Russia and hit the screens in 2009, belongs to the classics of domestic trash comedies, spitting on all the rules of good taste.
Little Buratino has grown up into a typical teenage rascal, who forms a band with his dubious friends Artemon, Pierrot and Toivo – while hooliganizing and mocking the police, they seek inspiration for the band’s songs. Trolling around carefree, the young hooligans don’t even notice that a giant skyscraper has risen in the middle of the city, where the nesting evil billionaire Carabas Barabas has set a trap to find the boy-bomb – a boy who is half tree, half human and has millions of magical seeds growing inside. Buratino is played by Mikk Nurga, who is also expected in Haapsallu.
Merivoo himself is looking forward to the upcoming session. “It seems like a good time to review the adventures of the tree boy in Russia,” he said.
In Haapsalu, the Russian-language version of the film, which was circulated at festivals (Shanghai, Austin, São Paulo) and which has not been shown in Estonia before, will be screened.
The film is part of HÕFF’s special program “Buratino on Punk”, where Japanese Shozin Fukui’s horror film “Pinocchio 964” will also be shown. In it, a broken sex ori cyborg is thrown into the street, where a homeless girl picks him up. The film from 1991 has now become a Japanese cyberpunk classic.
According to HÕFF director Helmut Jänes, this year marks the 140th anniversary of the publication of Carlo Collodi’s famous children’s book, and the program dedicated to its main character shows how exciting it is to interpret the adventures of this wooden doll.
“The two films we’re showing may seem like night and day at first, but they’re not – both share a funky beginning that makes this famous wooden puppet a timeless character. Buratino is punk – punk in the best sense of the word,” he said.
The Haapsalu horror and fantasy film festival will take place this year on the 28th-30th. until April.