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Lord Puttnam considers Patarei Sea Fortress for Arctic 30 Film

Patarei Prison from the sea view in Tallinn, Estonia

While in Estonia in November, Lord Puttnam visited the Patarei Sea Fortress to assess its suitability as a setting for his next film project, Arctic 30.  Built in the nineteenth century, the fortress acted a prison from 1920 to 2002, and so is typical of many Soviet-era detention centres. It now acts as monument to victims of communism and Nazism, and has an important place in the history of the Republic of Estonia. Lord Puttnam is producing a film adaptation of the story of the Arctic 30, a group of 30 Greenpeace Activists who scaled a Russian oil platform in an attempt to ‘Save the Arctic’.  They were subsequently imprisoned in Russia and endured many months there before eventually being released. Puttnam said Patarei Prison would be a good location in which to film this sequence of the story, describing the fortress as appropriate both historically and emotionally. His plan to film at this site was met with widespread approval from the Estonian Film Institute, and was covered in the national Estonian news (see clip below).