Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival — A–Z of films

Touzani has no time for throwing a pity party for these women, she shows instead that they deserve our admiration rather than our sympathy.

The sweetness in this film and its lightness of touch are utterly beguiling. Nothing you can do will prepare you for the way it ends.

Every time we are away from the older generation, they're sorely missed and the action drags without their presence.

This is chiefly a character study of one man's humanity in the face of grief but it echoes the wider trauma of a nation that was decimated by hunger.

A film full of despair and tortured masculinity.

Its plot is more cleverly structured than is at first apparent, and although it seems to lose its way part way through, there's always something going on upstairs.

If things get complicated quickly, it's to director Samir's credit that he and his co-writer Furat al Jamil succeed in creating a number of well-rounded memorable characters, who anchor the less believable elements of the story.

It's laugh out loud funny in places, and there's an endearing earnestness throughout.

For all its lowlife wallowing in metaphorical (and in the end literal) shit, Cat Sticks is beautiful.

Fayyad carefully balances sound so that audiences are not overwhelmed by the thunder of the shelling but still get enough of a sense of it to understand what it does to those on the ground.

Barnett excels at capturing nuances of expression and action.

There are themes around punishment and forgiveness running throughout this film but they're rarely simple.

Hákonarson's woman against corporate Mafia premise is solid enough but The County never manages to generate the emotional intensity that the feuding brothers brought to his previous film.

The director proves a master of the tragicomic as he observes one man's slip from midlife crisis to madness by way of obsession.

Sometimes a film is interesting despite its director.

The jarring juxtaposition of sparkly, sexualised Seventies choreography and fire-and-brimstone Catholicism is absolutely key to a film that explores the mismatch between devout religious beliefs and modernity.

The sight of a four month old child standing upright on Snorri's hand, raised up above the water, will simultaneously awe and terrify many parents.

Despite its reliance on the crutch of cliche in terms of plotting there is much to admire here stylistically.

A bittersweet vision of America barrelling down a two-lane road to nowhere.

Both a portrait of marginalised lives in urban Vietnam, and a "Taoist" fable.

The disparate vignettes of Echo are held together by strange rhymes and resonances.

Di Girolamo has a compelling intensity in the role but it's still hard to believe that everyone would fall quite so hard and fast for Ema's devil may care charms and unpredictability, especially with so much on the line.

All praise to the acting here, as each star deliver characters with depth and meaning, without the encumbrance of lengthy self-exposition.

What might have been an edgy little thriller is transformed by Borgen director Jesper W Nielsen into the kind of bitchy workplace drama that will make many viewers grateful for the Covid lockdown.

Funny, bleak and profound.

Keane himself is performing a tricky act here, juggling the real and the surreal while walking a tightrope of story.

If part of the trajectory has a familiar feel, it is given fresh verve by the social-realist backdrop.

On the one hand, a parable of corporate greed and exploitation, and of society's treatment of the disabled or "deficient", and on the other a story of the way we all reinvent ourselves precisely through story

A bravura piece of work.

One of the flaws of Malick’s film is that the main character goes into introspective mode, thereby depriving us of any real insight in to his thoughts.

The directors let the humanism shine out without resorting to sentimentality, capturing moments of joy, such as the pleasure of shared, sticky honey with the same lack of artifice as moments of pain or grief.

Neatly put together, accessible and smart, Human Nature spends only a small portion of its running time mired in the usual debates, getting beyond them to explore much more interesting areas.

iHuman is worthy, and good, but not worthwhile, nor very good.

This is a gem of a role and Peretti allows himself to be fully absorbed by it.

There's much to enjoy here, from the gripping performances, particularly from Taujanskaité and Bagdziunas to the handsome cinematography from Denis Luschick, showing bags of potential in his first feature

There is a tension between two worlds here.

The potential for violence and creeping paranoia haunt the film, but though some elements of it may feel murkier than others, there's always a sense that Matulevicius and his cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis are in control.

There’s plenty of judgement to be passed, especially by cranky old writers like myself, but Mandelup does an admirable job of presenting her subjects on their own terms.

Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway reboots the genre by both using and subverting its conventions.

As Jojo, Davis delivers one of the finest performances of the year.

All its genre elements are the neat packaging for some grim state-of-the-nation commentary, showing an aspect of Iranian society that is seldom explored on film.

Greenfield keeps tight control, allowing Marcos to say what she wants, while busily illustrating the opposing perspective.

Only really comes alive in the last ten minutes.

The trouble with all this mood, is that it eventually gets laid on too thick.

There's a magical quality about this film that coalesces in Wallecan's perspectives on Memphis landscapes and the dance performances themselves.

The Lodge hinges on a powerhouse performance from Keough, who inhabits the troubled Grace so completely that we can stay with her even as her ability to distinguish what's real and what isn't breaks down.

You don't need to be a fan of board sports to enjoy the latest documentary from Joe Berlinger, but if you are you'll certainly get plenty of added value

Looted is all at once a localised crime drama, a tale of a difficult yet loving father-son relationship, an exploration of escapism's price, and a social realist anatomisation of a community.

Hussain is magnetic in the main role - with Shem every inch the cool, flaneur, with his leather coats and desert dry observations

The direction is workmanlike but well edited.

Marionette (Marioneta) makes special demands on its cast

This is a very subtle and accomplished feature debut.

Brummer is the perfect choice to play Nick.

Looking at the colours, the entire film could be taking place inside a mushroom. Cigarette smoke penetrates almost every scene.

This is another downward spiralling character piece with the same bruising toughness of its predecessor, but handled with a tauter, darkly playful control.

Markovics intentionally pushes viewers out of their comfort zone.

Ogrodnik - so impressive in 2017's Silent Night - is magnetic.

Wang and Zhang are to be commended for fitting as much in as they do, even if it does mean the film roams about rather than having a single focus.

Smutný gives us faces that will stories even when they're still, the weight of long experience etched into every line.

Engages with an energetic and angry vitality as well as authenticity.

Tim Mielants's quirky comedy is shot through with melancholy and holds a deep affection for its earnest hero even when he seems to be the butt of everybody's jokes.

Details sparkle in the script too, pared back to only what is needed.

What could have been a traditionally lavish costume drama has been pared down to highlight the erotic tension and sensuality

One of the things that makes Psychobitch stand out is how flawed both its principals are.

Muayad Alayan's beautifully observed, studiously discomfiting film has a lot to say about power and privilege.

The camera is, literally, down with the kids, at their eye level, drinking in their mayhem, their laughter and their viewpoint.

Aleksei Kamynin's second feature comes with so many ideas and so much energy that it almost bursts at the seams.

You can sense the influence of Charlie Kaufman.

Although as a genre cinema, Kelly's film fits into the current wave of new gangster cinema, one cannot help but feel that the creator wanted to put a little too much into his work.

Having cinematographers Ulrich Burtin and Luca Pougy shoot the gathering in a single take is an audacious move that pays off.

A chiller of displaced domesticity

As in much Russian science fiction, the tone here is darker and yet vastly more alert to the wonders of the universe than is usual in the Western equivalent.

What the cumulative effect of masterfully restored newsreel may lack in action, it more than makes up for with the numbing, slow-burn sensation of being drawn under the spell of state-orchestrated mass mourning.

Jan Vysocy’s soundscape is huge, overwhelming. It reminds us of the smallness of the human characters.

Everything plays out within 80 minutes but you'll feel the impact of the crash for much longer.

This isn't an easy watch but it's a compelling one.

This is a well structured and affecting piece of film-making.

In less sensitive hands than Kore-eda's, it could have come across as cloyingly introverted but instead there is wit and warmth in the observed relationship between the two women.

It's as though the director is so in love with the striking visual aesthetic that he forgets the need to narratively connect the dots.