The 28th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival kicks off on the 8th of November and, together with its sub-festivals, will present a total of 249 feature films and 323 short films from 81 countries. In addition to the six previously announced competition programmes, the festival will also present a number of non-competition programmes featuring dozens of freshest award-winning films. Highlights of the sidebars include the Midnight Shivers genre section, restored unknown classics in the Old Gold: the classics come to life programme, and the Best of Fest section.
SEE THE FULL LIST OF PROGRAMMES HERE
SEE THE FULL LIST OF AWARDS HERE
PÖFF JURIES 2024
Official Selection Competition
Christoph Hochhäusler (Germany)
Head of the Jury, director
Christoph Hochhäusler, born in Munich in 1972, is a German director and screenwriter. His seven feature films have premiered in official selection in Cannes (I Am Guilty, 2005, The City Below, 2010), Berlin (This Very Moment, 2003, One Minute of Darkness, 2011, Till the End of the Night, 2023), Locarno (La Morta Viendra, 2024, PÖFF) and Rome (The Lies of the Victors, 2014) and have won numerous awards.
Bianca Balbuena (Philippines)
Producer
Bianca is a Filipino producer, educator and co-founder of Epicmedia which has produced over 30 features, most notably Venice Film Festival Lion of the Future Engkwentro, Berlinale Winners A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery and Cu Li Never Cries, Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard title Viet and Nam, Sundance Film Festival Midnight title In My Mother’s Skin, acquired by Amazon Studios, and Fan Girl which competed at PÖFF 2020.
Marija Razgutė (Lithuania)
Producer
She has produced internationally acclaimed works such as Marija Kavtaradze’s Slow (Best Director award at the Sundance Film Festival, Lithuanian contender for Oscars in 2023, The Award for Best Baltic Producer for Co-production, PÖFF 2023) and Summer Survivors (the Toronto Film Festival, 2018). In 2008, she established M-Films, which is one of the most active film production companies in the Baltics.
Jawad Rhalib (Belgium)
Director
Jawad Rhalib is known for his social and committed cinema. His realistic style centers on observation and uncompromising denunciation of the flaws of and the political, economic and religious ravages on our societies. Among his works are and documentaries and feature films such as 7, Rue de la Folie, Rebellious girl, Amal (PÖFF 2023), El Ejido, the Law of Profit, The Damned of the Sea, When Arabs Danced and Fadma, Even Ants Have Wings.
Tomas Vengris (Lithuania/USA)
Director
Tomas is a Lithuanian-American filmmaker. He received his B.A. from Columbia University and completed his M.F.A at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, CA. His directorial debut Motherland (PÖFF 2019) won the European Audience Award at the ArteKino Film Festival, and Best Film in the Baltic Competition at PÖFF. It was a finalist at the 2020 European Film Awards. His second feature, Five & a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius, is currently making its way through the international festival circuit, having started with the Best Film recognition in the Rebels with a Cause Competition at (PÖFF 2023).
First Feature Competition
John Durie (United Kingdom)
Head of the Jury, film marketing strategies.
John is the CEO of Strategic Film Marketing, based in London and Cannes. He has worked on film marketing, international sales and/or distribution on over 800 films and documentaries with top filmmakers including Joel and Ethan Coen, Pedro Almodóvar, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, as well as many first-time and second-time European directors. After 10 years with film sales outfits in London, he founded his own company Strategic Film Marketing in 1993.
Daniel Green (United Kingdom)
Distributor
Daniel is the distribution operations director at MUBI, a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI creates, curates, acquires and champions visionary films, bringing them to audiences all over the world. Some recent and upcoming MUBI Releases include: Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Ira Sachs’ Passages, Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life, Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex? (PÖFF 2023), Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves (PÖFF 2023).
Carles Torras (Spain)
Director, producer
Carles is a Barcelona-based producer and director known for his nominations at the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Goya Awards. As the founder and owner of Zabirskie Films, he has produced films that have been celebrated at prestigious international festivals such as South by Southwest, San Sebastián, BFI London, Shanghai, Sitges, and Tallinn Black Nights. His works have earned over 50 international awards. Among his most acclaimed films are Callback (2017), which won Best Film at the Málaga Film Festival, The Paramedic (2020), which reached No. 2 worldwide on Netflix, and Upon Entry (2022), a multi-award-winning film that received 27 international awards, including the FIPRESCI award at PÖFF 2022.
Karolin Jürise (Estonia)
Actress
Karolin is an Estonian theatre and film actress who studied acting in the University of Tartu Culture Academy in Estonia. She has completed several workshops all over the world: “Michael Chekhov Europe Training” in Istanbul, “Character-based Improvisation” with Robert Marchand in Tallinn, “Physical Lab” with Yorgos Karamalegos and Yoshi Oida in Paris, etc. Karolin also has the lead role in Helen Takkin’s debut feature film Life & Love (Baltic Film Competition), and is now finishing another lead role in German Golub’s debut feature film titled Our Erika which is the life story of the Estonian track bicycle racer and Olympic gold medallist Erika Salumäe.
Baltic Film Competition
Mikko Fritze (Germany)
Head of the Jury, head of the Finnland-Institut
Mikko is currently the director of the Finnland-Institut in Berlin. As a graduate of Hamburg University majoring in German, biology, and education, Mikko Fritze has had a varied career including social work, business, marketing, and public relations, as well as teaching, translating and interpreting. Mikko Fritze has worked for the Goethe-Institute since 1990, and has four times served as the director of the Institute, first in Estonia (1998–2004), then in Uruguay (2004–2007), in Finland (2010–2017) and in the Netherlands (2017–2021).
Annika Pham (United Kingdom)
Journalist, editor
Annika is a London-based freelance film and TV reporter, regular contributor to Variety, covering in particular film and TV news from the Nordic region. Her previous roles include editor/writer of the newsletter and online news service nordicfilmandtvnews.com published by the Nordic fund Nordisk Film & TV Fond, UK-Nordic correspondent for Cineuropa, and international editor for the French trade publication Le Film Français.
Fernando E. Juan Lima (Argentina)
Critic, ex-Mar del Plata International Film Festival's President
Fernando is a lawyer, doctor in law, administrative chamber judge, journalist and film critic. He has written in the magazine El Amante and in numerous newspapers and specialised publications and he has been the host of the radio show La Autopista del Sur since he created it in 2010. Fernando is the former vice-president of the Argentine Film Institute (2017–2018) and the former president of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival (2020–2024).
Rebels with a Cause competition programme
Marica Stocchi (Italy)
Head of the Jury, producer
Marica graduated from the Sapienza University of Rome in philosophy and ethics in 2002. She started her career in 2003, working with major Italian theatres such as Teatro Argentina and India, Teatro Eliseo in Rome and Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan. Later on, she collaborated as a journalist with Il Messaggero, one of the main newspapers in Italy. Since 2013, she has been working as a cinema producer. In 2018, she started her own Italian independent production company Rosamont, where she is the CEO and main producer.
Bradley Liew (Philippines)
Producer
Bradley is the CEO of Manila-based Epicmedia Productions Inc. As a Producer, he focuses on championing both seasoned and upcoming auteurs with distinct and uncompromising voices. He has produced a trio of Lav Diaz’s films: the anti-musical “Season of the Devil” (Berlinale Competition), his 16mm film noir “When the Waves Are Gone” (Venice Out of Competition), and “Essential Truths of the Lake” (Locarno Competition), as well as Kenneth Dagatan’s Sundance Midnight Section’s “In My Mother’s Skin”, which was sold to Amazon.
Marko Raat (Estonia)
Director
Marko is an Estonian writer-director. Since the mid-1990s, he has made documentaries and feature films and participated in art exhibitions as an author of works of video art. Marko has curated and designed art and architecture exhibitions, directed plays at the Von Krahl Theatre, written film criticism and given film lectures, and organised regular screenings and meetings with filmmakers at his personal summer cinema. Marko’s latest documentary, Funeral Diaries, was the opening film at DocPoint Tallinn, and his feature film Views of Lake Biwa premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in spring 2024.
Critics' Picks Competition
Miroslav Mogorovic (Serbia)
Head of the Jury, producer
Since 1995, Miroslav has been working at the European Film Festival Palić and has for many years been the festival’s Programme Director. In spring 2004, he founded the motion picture company Art & Popcorn and entered the film production market independently. He is the founder and director of the Dead Lake Horror and Wine Festival and the Lakedance American Independent Film Festival, a member of EAVE, ACE and EFA. He has worked as a producer, co-producer or executive producer on 35 feature films, many of which have won significant awards at prestigious film festivals.
Gust Van den Berghe (Belgium)
Director, curator
An accomplished writer, film and stage director, as well as a co-curator at the M Museum in Leuven, Gust made his feature film debut in 2010 with Little Baby Jesus of Flandr (PÖFF 2010), followed by his second film, Blue Bird (PÖFF 2011), both of which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. In 2014, he directed his third feature, Lucifer (PÖFF Grand Prix), and in 2023, he released his fourth feature film, The Magnet Man (PÖFF 2023). Gust is also the co-founder of Fenakisto, a Brussels-based production company dedicated to author-driven films.
Elisa Fernanda Pirir (Guatemala/Norway)
Producer
Elisa has been working with several acclaimed international directors such as Thomas Arslan, Ciro Guerra, Cristina Gallego, Nabil Ayouch, César Díaz, Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Laura Mora. In 2023, she founded her own company STÆR in Northern Norway. In early 2023, her first feature documentary Calls from Moscow premiered in the Berlinale International Film Festival Forum, Hotdocs and MoMA, co-production “The Hypnosis” (PÖFF 2023) by Ernst De Geer won three prizes at Karlovy Vary and her first short film “Almost Invisible” was nominated for the Best Norwegian Short at Kortfilmfestivalen.
Doc@PÖFF Competition
Tinatin Gurchiani (Georgia)
Head of the Jury, director
Tinatin studied directing at the University of Film and Television Konrad Wolf (HFF) in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany. The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear was her first feature film, screened and awarded at numerous festivals in over 140 countries, including IDFA, Sundance, Hot Docs, Thessaloniki IFF, Viennale, AFI Docs, Visions Du Reel Nyon, Busan International Film Festival, etc., and won Best Director at Sundance in 2013, Filmmaker Award at Hot Docs 2013, It’s All True Award in Brazil, etc. Tinatin Gurchiani lives and works in Tbilisi and Berlin.
Kacper Czubak (Poland)
Cinematographer
Kacper is the cinematographer behind the multi-prize documentary film Call Me Marianna that was awarded the Premio Zonta Award at the 68th Locarno Film Festival, the Golden Horn at the 55th Kraków Film Festival and numerous other prizes. He has twice received the award for best cinematography for the film Theatre of Violence – at the 20th Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival in Warsaw, and the Polish Society of Cinematographers award for best cinematography in a documentary film in 2024. He is a graduate of the Krzysztof Kieslowski Film School in Poland and a Berlinale Talents alumnus. Kacper is a member of the Polish Society of Cinematographers.
Carlos E. Lesmes (Colombia)
Director
Carlos (1987) is a Colombian film director based in Estonia. He has been an active member of the Estonian film community since his arrival in 2011 to pursue his M.A. at Tallinn University. His debut documentary film, A Loss of Something Ever Felt, was screened in several festivals around the world and received the award for Best Documentary at the Estonian Film and Television Awards 2021 Carlos is interested in people, comic books, and particle physics, most of all in how to combine them to try and tell stories about the experience of being a human, inside and outside of the screen.
FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) jury
(evaluates the First Feature Competition)
Bernard Besserglik (France)
Head of the Jury, critic
Bernard is a Paris-based bilingual English writer and critic. A former journalist and foreign correspondent, he has reviewed French cinema for The Hollywood Reporter for the past 15 years and made regular appearances on the France-24 television channel to speak about British cinema.
Rita Di Santo (United Kingdom)
Critic
Rita is a London-based film critic, historian, programmer, script developer, and broadcaster. Her writing has appeared in the Daily Mirror, Morning Star, The Tribune, and Culture Matters. She is the editor of FilmnewsUK and a former editor of 35mm Magazine.
Ralf Sauter (Estonia)
Critic
Ralf Sauter was a freelance film critic for more than ten years. In the spring of 2022, he began working as a cultural journalist for the daily newspaper Postimees. He also co-hosts the weekly radio show Kinovärgiga mandariin with Andrei Liimets and Maarja Hindoalla. Last year, Sauter won the Jaan Tõnisson Award for his video reviews of Estonian film premieres.
The 28th edition of PÖFF l will take place from the 8th until the 24th of November, while the festival’s industry platform Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event will run from 14th until the 22nd of November.
The opening ceremony take place on the 8th of November at Alexela Concert Hall. The festival opening film is Long Story Short, directed by David Dietl.
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival with Industry@Tallinn &; Baltic Event and with the two sub-festivals, Just Film and PÖFF Shorts, has grown into one of the biggest film festivals in Northern Europe and the busiest regional industry platforms.
