Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival — A–Z of films

The smoke, the blasts, the spinning of ejecting shell casings, yells that become cries, the front-line as it becomes frantic.

Day-Lewis Jr pays attention to his actors and frames them in ways that make monologues count but there’s a lot of unnecessary brooding about in between times.

Guimarães engaging and flowing style offers a sort of stream-of-consciousness guide to the woman's day.

Rosi expertly paints a picture of a community with all its widely varied facets.

When you get old, hope you find someone who looks at you the way Mascaro looks at Tereza and Roberta.

The lads’ delight at their early success is engaging, and both stars acquit themselves well.

The genre elements never quite lock into a clean payoff, but the refusal to resolve things neatly leaves the viewer in a similarly unstable, hyper-vigilant state.

Lithuanian director Jurgis Matulevičius, inspired by the true tragic story of an MMA fighter who was ‘cancelled... gives a tale of being washed-up a bleakly hard boiled and distinctive eastern European tang.

Touching, compelling and full of humanity.

This film's message of smaller personal concerns being swamped by greater political ones is still touching.

The narrative proceeds at a controlled pace set to a jangling score of percussion and chants, which is enough to set viewers on edge without the disturbing scenes of food being tentatively eaten and then disgorged.

Troyanovsky also communicates the mental toll that comes with being away from the frontline, not just for those who have been in active service, like Alaska, but also parents and family.

The idea of her as a lone voice is emphasised by striking cinematography, often of her riding her bike across the landscape, which has the wide-open quality of a western.

Modest in scale but rich in mood.

Pennanen’s approach is eclectic, which matches her subject.

Both words of the title loom large together and apart and are sprinkled into the smallest verbal and non-verbal exchanges.

The artifice takes over, making the desired authenticity completely fake.

Somewhere between the low brow cock jokes and the high stakes – by which, I mean the sharp wooden pointy ones – Radu Jude serves up a sharp edged critique of populism, capitalism and the modern world.

The blurry, hazy images recorded entirely on a discontinued Sony Ericsson cellphone – frequently in long takes – make it a hardly digestible slow cinema challenge, yet rewarding as an aesthetic experience.

Loginov lets the city drift in and out of focus until dusk and dawn blur, and night stops feeling like a time of day and becomes a state of mind.

Nvotová doesn’t shy away from torturing her protagonists while the camera lingers on Michal’s and Zuzka's bodies and minds collapsing inward.

Fiume O Morte! resists a purely historical reading, instead inviting a present-day sociological perspective in which the authoritarian leader becomes one element within the city’s layered history.

Strømdahl keeps us within the apartment for virtually the whole film, watching as Mikal tries to negotiate the unpredictability of Tonya and Jason or retreats into a world of video games.

Aleñar Iglesias... presents the ordinary world as loaded with meaning.

While the sisters are unguarded around the camera and often caught in close conversation, Murphy also knows when to hang back so that we get a picture of them in their environment, which emphasises the majesty of the Himalayas but which also captures a sense of their smallness against the world.

Director Júlia De Paz Solvas shows the effect a violent and manipulative father can have on others without giving him the centrestage attention he would crave – notably we never even hear his name.

The adaptation feels oddly timid and selective.

While bringing home the injustice of life for Toha, Goher treads a careful line so as not to turn the adults into cartoonish 'bad guys', which makes the situation all the more upsetting.

You’re unlikely to see anything quite like it any time soon.

Most of the filmmaker’s passion, wisdom and wits is packed in the first half, while the second half represents pure “production” of content.

Unlike other movies, where the music and the dancing usually serve as a sort of ill.ustrative, colourful background, here they dictate the rhythmic backbone of the film

A feat of patience.

The performances are thrilling, emotionally direct and physically exacting, but they function as narrative instruments too.

Manizha Bakhtari may not be a household name but after watching Natalie Halla’s documentary you’re likely to think she ought to be.

This is a film with a fine regard for detail, and it is neither mocking nor deferential.

It looks as depressing as it feels.

Sinai portrays the situations one might find quite common and “close to home” with precision and emotional clarity.

The filmmaker who previously made her name with romantic comedy-dramas, proves to be a bonafide genre auteur, although it is her first attempt

Despite the depressing nature of what’s happening at the school, Talankin’s affection for his students and his resilient sense of humour ensure that the film is always engaging.

The trouble is that the whole thing is not exactly new for a viewer who has a clue or two about politics.

Park keeps inviting us to laugh, then forcing us to confront what, exactly, we’re laughing at.

There is no grand adventure, no melodramatic pathos, no broad comedy, just life as an eternal struggle for survival and for the chance of thriving, but also with a sense of warmth.

Jacir's film might look back to the 1930s but it's a film that is in conversation with the present-day.

The ambition is admirable; the execution uneven.

Sjöström's film is not just an early horror, but an argument for the moral validity of cinema itself.

It’s not a showy performance, but it’s a standout.

Combining slick digital look with the look of various antique formats, from DV to super-8, Simón creates her very own smooth blend.

A true masterpiece of modernism.

Marcelo is at home in the fine tradition of flicks where the fact that they are an agent is mainly a secret to them.

The film looks amazing, but it sounds even more incredible.

I was entertained, in much the same way but not to the same extent as the first outing.

Always feels grounded and honest and a little bit awkward in all the right ways.

Writer/director/star Eva Victor has created a poem about the pain and absurdity of entering and continuing adulthood, even when things feel heavy and hopeless.

The lives mirror each other, build on each other, contradict each other, haunt each other.

De Pauw is great as Horst, a frail, but still-threatening presence bursting with volatile, even violent energy.

This is about war being fought in a moral maze as Hawkins considers the invasion of space owned by others and the way that borders, both physical and ethical, can be redrawn from a very corporeal perspective.

Chillingly restrained and quietly devastating

There are a lot of traces of other filmmakers’ work in Saint-Jean’s body horror that is most reminiscent of an extended vintage monster-of-the-week-kind of episode of The X Files.

Clariond is less interested in political intrigue than in what happens when a wounded ego with power is left alone with his own myth.

The heat of summer pulses beneath the action and we can virtually smell the sweat and decay as the sound of flies or a gathering storm punctuate the soundtrack.

There is some very good work here, and all of it tempered where it needs to be, to give due prominence to Hind herself.

The Belgian filmmaker quickly proves to be a director who is quite nimble with a feint in his own terms, so that when his punches come they often hit in unexpected places.

Dano has chosen to use the same flat vocal expression throughout, a technique well suited to satire which might have worked if only the rest of the film had been a bit more lively.