Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival — A–Z of films

Trobisch lets the normality bite.

Aleksey Fedorchenko isn't the first to try to come at the horrors of the Holocaust from a fresh perspective - although the narrow outlook he adopts here also ends up limiting how much he is able to say.

Any film that has both a fight director and a dance choreographer is probably doing something right.

This quiet, documentary takes the viewer on an interesting, intriguing journey, ending on a question mark.

For those who know and love Van Gogh's work, the effect is hypnotic, a translation of his vision into a new medium.

The rituals set in motion at the start, also tune us into the wavelength of portent, so that a heron's feet on a rug or the sound of locusts carry at least as much threat as the site of a loaded gun.

The directors take what is primarily an observational approach, with only intermittent scenes clearly set up to encourage specific discussions. In return for this they get intimate access to their star's day to day life.

The veneer of technical excellence never quite takes your mind off the lack of substance beneath.

An original and highly ambitious premise that maintains its grip your attention and imagination.

Far from being lascivious, Nurlan is wistful, and Manojlovi, who has the look of a sort of hangdog Walter Mathau, favours expressions of surprise, puzzlement and resignation over anything so low-brow as lust.

both a love letter to the documentarians from the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania... and a dialogue between the period in which these poetic pioneers were working and the present day.

Lee works the narrative with an ambivalence that borders on the inscrutable

Turkish director Tolga Karaçelik shows a fine ear for family dynamics as well as a joyously off-the-wall sense of humour that ensures even though we've taken similar movie road trips in the past, this one feels fresh.

The writers start from a place where the screw is already turned and, just when you think they can't get it any tighter, find new ways to increase the tension - matching their torque with action.

You might notice the elegance of composition while knowing that the place contains so much human suffering.

Becky Parsons and John M Tran's cinematography brings out every detail of the crowded rooms before us and puts us to close to the grain of the wood that we can almost smell it.

In many ways the film is stronger for being viewed at a distance from the events it depicts.

Chained For Life finds a rich vein of comedy in the awfulness of many people's reactions to disability.

There's an impressive range of mouthwatering dishes on display, constantly being adapted and upgraded.

Beautifully shot and articulated.

It's the detail that really makes the film fascinating.

Bitokov develops the shifting, brooding relationships of the men well but other elements of the story are given short shrift.

It's essentially a character study - the trouble is that there's not much character there.

The film carries a message about the importance of tolerance, love and a healthy dose of silliness in the face of the darker elements of modern life.

Each successive scene hits you over the head with the ferocity of the action.

Doillon is wonderfully adept and natural, and it's really her performance that makes the film compelling.

While Farhadi certainly knows how to spin a web of intrigue, deceit and suspicion, the narrative has a tendency to leap from strand to strand, often leaving the audience stumbling in its wake.

The dialogue is irreverent and sharp like a raven's claw.

The final stretch, when Alex commences the climb, is some of the most nail-biting cinema you will ever see.

Touching and brave.

Lazarov lets his tale unfold gradually like a gentle thaw

Mortensen has gained weight. He plays Tony with confidence.

Newcomer Tardiolo is splendid in the lead.

This film displays a deftness of touch.

Elusively impenetrable stuff that only loosely can be described as cinema.

In short, Insect is a self-consuming product, always at pains to expose its artifice as it offers behind-the-scenes commentary on both its own and the play's making.

You might not think you're in the mood for buying, but his extravagant sales pitch is likely to win you over by the end.

Brady doesn't want us to feel good, she wants us to feel the connection

This odd couple film could easily have been mere farce, but the two leads, both on top form, imbue it with a warmth and pathos that breaks through in unexpected places.

If you're interested in the technical details of the sport or the process of filmmaking, you may find Julien Faraut's unapologetically artsy film fascinating.

There is also no mistaking the challenge to us, the viewers, regarding our own awareness of where products come from and our, albeit unwitting, culpability in child exploitation.

This isn't the kind of film that's destined to win mainstream awards but Paradis' performance deserves to be remembered.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was that it balances its study of Will with an exploration of Tom’s coming of age, while never making Will’s decision to drop out morally clear-cut.

Kirkeskov keeps Amal's character ambiguous from the viewer's perspective, so that tension stems from what we don't know about her.

Reisner is a real find as the young star and Siimetsis gets a performance from her that has a summer's day brightness to it.

We are spared the usual sugary score and the savant trope is nowhere to be seen. Instead we get the mess, the anger and the frustration much more common in real life.

The improvised nature of the script also works in its favour, with the unpredictability for the actors themselves translating to tension on the screen.

The film only lives up to about 80% of the promise whereas I wanted 150%.

The film remains mysterious without being confusing - you don't need to grasp every detail to understand its metaphors and message and its enigmatic aura invites repeat viewings.

All the more powerful because of its deep roots in myth.

Whatever else she may be, Maya clearly has no tolerance for bullshit - she seems constitutionally incapable of playing the game.

Flynn is convincing and sympathetic in the lead.

Few artists are ever willing to let their audiences get this close to their unrevised selves.

Thedin is excellent in the central role, perfectly balancing Jill's wisdom and insight with her vulnerability and sometime naivety.

Mansky's bigger picture about the manipulation of a nation is crystal clear.

Billingham's consideration calls for empathy rather than condemnation.

Religious and family tensions are explored with care and sensitivity.

Some may be dissuaded by the painstaking pace yet the tone manages to be both humorous and heart-rending at the same time.

Phoenix gives his character more depth than such men are usually afforded but deliberately takes a back seat, allowing Reilly the dramatic lead role he has long deserved.

Both leads acquit themselves well despite having little or no prior acting experience.

This is certainly not the first musical to treat its songs as set pieces and it delivers in terms of action elsewhere, with some thrilling horseback manoeuvres and solid fight scenes.

There's a strong sense of isolation from the start in Fisher's film.

This mixture of sharp observation and inadvertent clumsiness characterises a film whose director has obvious talent but needs experience.

Sunset while resisting the digital, flings us into a dreamworld where nostalgia for the past is twin to premonition of our future.

If we compared the original to a Mark Rothko canvas - a distillation of raw emotion - this version is more akin to a colossal, baffling kinetic sculpture, one that seems to exist in more dimensions than it ought to.

Zoabi uses farcical comedy as his warm-hearted messenger, presenting his argument with a disarming hug and a surprising dash of romance.

Mayfair treats her scenes of sex and desire with restraint, using juxtaposition to evoke mood.

There's a savage kind of beauty in Pretsell's portrait of desperation and despair.

Time and place hold both no and every meaning in Christian Petzold's latest film.

If we have, ourselves, become greedy to know exactly what the secret is by this point, Barve certainly does not disappoint.

Though Mauro Herce's cinematography is strong, Yasin struggles to take us beyond the look to the feel of the women's relationship.

There are just too many movie references and homage to the likes of David Lynch in this noirish thriller to make it anything other than an over-derivative exercise in style over substance.

You don't have to look far for allegory in Panek's film.

The story, such as it is, has the dreamy flow of childhood remembered, but though the honeyed tones of the magic hour are often used, there's never a glossing over the toughness of life being faced by these free-range kids.

Offering a clear-sighted view of the situation that calls to mind executive producer Matthew Heinemann’s approach to the drug trade in Cartel Land, Kasbe digs at the complexity of the poaching problem.

The characters are beautifully drawn and the performances finely balanced in a film with a lot more going on upstairs than its preoccupation with violence might suggest.

Recent Hollywood heist films - typified by the Ocean's franchise - have been largely concerned with shiny surfaces, gloss and froth but British director Steve McQueen is much more interested in what lies beneath.

There's a refreshing lack of sentimentality in the way Omerzu captures his duo of protagonists.

Written around the songs as it is, the film makes good use of them and they add to rather than distracting from the narrative.

Shawky allows his characters to sit firmly in the driving seat.

It's in dance that the film's strength lies, illustrating, through choreography, Acosta's more abstract - and more negative - emotions, including fear, loneliness and lust.