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Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival · 2025

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2025

Official Selection - Competition

Programme

17 films · 7 reviews

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18 Holes To Paradise (18 Buracos para o Paraíso)

What to do with Dad’s house? With a fire ravaging the region, the discussion is becoming heated.

(Country: Portugal, Italy, Argentina; Year: 2025; Director: João Nuno Pinto; Writer: Fernanda Polacow)

The Dashed Lines (As Liñas Descontinuas)

Review preview for The Dashed Lines

Modest in scale but rich in mood.

Edin Custo · 4 out of 5
Bea is a 50-year-old woman going through a divorce, and Denís is a 28-year-old trans man struggling with job insecurity. An unexpected incident brings them together, and this encounter will change their lives forever.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2025; Director: Anxos Fazáns; Writer: Anxos Fazáns; Stars: Mara Sánchez, Adam Prieto)

Duality (Doganeh)

Through Tehran’s streets and beyond time itself, three lives intertwine in a meditation on love and loss.

(Country: Iran; Year: 2025; Director: Abbas Nezamdoost; Writer: Abbas Nezamdoost)

The Frog And The Water (Der Frosch und das Wasser)

A lonely man joins a tour of Japanese tourists traveling through Germany and forms a wordless friendship.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2025; Director: Thomas Stuber)

The Good Daughter

Review preview for The Good Daughter

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.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
A teenager finds herself being manipulated by her violent father after her parents divorce.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2025; Director: Júlia de Paz Solvas; Writer: Núria Dunjó, Júlia de Paz Solvas; Stars: Kiara Arancibia, Janet Novas, Julián Villagrán, Petra Martínez)

Hungarian Wedding (Magyar menyegző)

Review preview for Hungarian Wedding

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

Marko Stojiljkovic · 3 out of 5
András and Péter are two young men trying to make it big with their rock band in Budapest in the early 1980s. When the opportunity arises to attend the wedding of András’s cousin in Transylvania, they decide to take it as a chance to raise some money. Once there, they embark on an unexpected adventure.

(Country: Hungary; Year: 2025; Director: Csaba Káel; Writer: Miksa Békési; Stars: Franciska Törőcsik, Tamás Kovács, Zsombor Kövesi, Barabás Rohonyi, Réka Bubik, István Znamenák)

The Imaginary Dog And The Lying Cat (Kakuu no Inu to Uso wo tsuku Neko)

Drama following a traditional family through a quarter of a century.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2025; Director: Yukihiro Morigaki)

LifeLike (Bir Arada Yalnız)

A terminally ill man spends his time in virtual reality, roaming through the astonishing and otherworldly places of the virtual cosmos. He even meets his girlfriend there…

(Country: Turkey, Greece, Romania; Year: 2025; Director: Ali Vatansever; Writer: Ali Vatansever)

Mira

A teenage girl's world changes after the arrival of illegal immigrants.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 2025; Director: Nour-Eddine Lakhmari; Writer: Nour-Eddine Lakhmari)

The Moon Is A Father Of Mine

After a 12-year-old is expelled from school, his estranged dad invites him to live with him.

(Country: Luxembourg, Türkiye, Georgia, Germany, Czech Republic, Bulgaria; Year: 2025; Director: George Ovashvili)

The Muralist (Ханын зураач)

An exiled painter returns to Mongolia to create his final mural, confronting memory, loss, and the city that forgot him.

(Country: Mongolia; Year: 2025; Director: Sengedorj Janchivdorj)

No Comment (Ingen Kommentar)

Review preview for No Comment

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

Marko Stojiljkovic · 3 out of 5
A PM gets caught up in a scandal ahead of the election.

(Country: Norway; Year: 2025; Director: Petter Næss; Writer: Ståle Stein Berg; Stars: Laila Goody, Anders Baasmo, Inger Helge Gimle, Natalie Bjerke Roland, Pia Tjelta)

Sisa

Historical thriller sees a woman out for vengeance.

(Country: Philippines; Year: 2025; Director: Jun Robles Lana)

The Stories

A tragicomedy encompasses political turmoil, football euphoria, and a wide range of Egyptian songs from 1967 to 1984.

(Country: Austria, France, Belgium, Egypt, Sweden; Year: 2025; Director: Abu Bakr Shawky)

Think Of England

Review preview for Think Of England

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.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
During the Second World War group of six people is delivered to an uninhabited island with a secret mission – to make some pornographic films which in the government’s opinion should boost the fighting morale of the boys at the front.

(Country: UK; Year: 2025; Director: Richard Hawkins; Writer: Richard Hawkins, Geoffrey Freeman; Stars: Natalie Quarry, Jack Bandeira, John McCrea, Ronni Ancona, Ben Bela Böhm, Ollie Maddigan, Oscar Hoppe)

Veins (Nervures)

Review preview for Veins

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.

Marko Stojiljkovic · 2.5 out of 5
In Saint-Étienne, an ancient forest village, a young woman uncovers the mystery surrounding the sudden death of her father.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2025; Director: Raymond St-Jean; Writer: Raymond Saint-Jean, Martin Girard; Stars: Romane Denis, Marie-Thérèse Fortin, Sylvain Marcel, Richard Fréchette, Anana Rydvald)

Versalles

Review preview for Versalles

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

Edin Custo · 3 out of 5
A fallen politician and his wife reinvent themselves as monarchs, taking inspiration from Louis XIV, the Sun King.

(Country: Mexico; Year: 2025; Director: Andrés Clariond; Writer: Andrés Clariond, Alo Valenzuela; Stars: Cuautli Jiménez, Maggie Civantos, José Manuel Rincón)