NIGHT VISIONS AUDIENCE AWARD 2017 GOES TO JAMES FRANCO’S THE DISASTER ARTIST

Fall edition of the festival breaks a new audience record in Helsinki, Finland.

Night Visions International Film Festival, the biggest genre film festival in Scandinavia arranged twice a year in Helsinki, Finland, wrapped its fall 2017 edition on Sunday, November 26 to record breaking numbers.

The lineup of the festival included 43 features and seven short films, presented in 67 screenings over four days and an all-nighter starting on Saturday, November 25 and wrapping up on the morning of Sunday, November 26. The screenings and other festival events catered to a total of over 8 900 people.

Night Visions Audience Award 2017, voted by the audiences of the fall edition of the Night Visions International Film Festival now for the tenth consecutive year, went to James Franco’s SXSW and TIFF hit The Disaster Artist (USA 2017). The Disaster Artist also turned out to be the most popular feature of the event, selling out both of its festival screenings well in advance.

First runner up in the audience award vote was Filmworker (USA 2017), Tony Zierra’s documentary on the former actor Leon Vitali who ended up working 24/7 as Stanley Kubrick’s personal assistant. Second runner up was It Came from the Desert (Finland/UK/Canada 2017), Finnish director Marko Mäkilaakso’s long-awaited pulp scifi adventure based on a Cinemaware video game from 1989.

The most popular retro feature in the lineup was the Scandinavian exploitation classic and Tarantino fave Thriller – A Cruel Picture (a.k.a. They Call Her One Eye, Sweden 1973). Starring the Swedish silver screen legend Christina Lindberg, the feature was now seen on the big screen for the first time ever in Finland, in a pristine digital version recently restored by the Swedish Film Institute. Lindberg was also one of the special filmmaker guests of this edition of Night Visions International Film Festival.

Night Visions returns to the screens in Helsinki, Finland next April. The dates of the spring 2018 edition of the festival are from April 18 to April 22, 2018.