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Tallinn announces first Critics' Picks selection

New selection follows hot on the heels of Official and Baltic Competition titles

by Amber Wilkinson

Ciaran Creagh’s Ann Photo: Courtesy of POFF

The selections for this year's Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival continue to come thick and fast, with the announcement of its new Critics' Picks strand this morning. The section will showcase 16 films handpicked by the festival's programme team.

Explaining the new strand, festival director Tinna Lokk said: “The Critics’ Picks competition programme solves a challenge our programme team has seen for many years: brilliant arthouse films that are unfortunately often lost in the mix of our fast-growing line-up and large-scale international festivals. It’s essential to our mission as a festival to create structures to introduce films of all shapes, colours and sizes to our audience.”

She added: “The critic programmers who have put together this new programme have succeeded in selecting some uniquely compelling and engaging features films. I can’t wait to introduce them to wider audiences this November.”

The Critics’ Pick programming team is headed by Nikolaj Nikitin, head of SOFA School of Film Advancement, bringing in several decades of experience as a curator, film magazine editor-in-chief, journalist and author.

He said: “I was not prepared for the amazing, diverse, excellent level and quality of films we had to choose from - it was easy in a way but, in another way, incredibly difficult to make the final selection. It’s a huge pleasure to join the Black Nights family and it’s been an honour to curate this competition with my own PÖFF debut - I feel privileged and very honored, especially as 13 outstanding titles are just a lucky number to start with and our opener ROXY, a genius and genuine genre thriller clearly proves - that European authors don’t have to hide behind Hollywood’s back.”

The inaugural Critics’ Picks selection includes ten world and three international premieres. Three films will screen out of competition, including a gala screening of Estonian co-production Call Of God.

The festival has also announced its Official Competition and Baltic Competition titles in the last week. The Official Competition features 19 world premieres, including Finnish director J.-P. Valkeapää’s Hit Big, and Irish director Ciaran Creagh’s Ann. As at many festivals this year, Ukraine is stepping into the spotlight, with three world premieres, Marysia Nikitiuk’s Lucky Girl, Sashenka, directed by Alexander Zhovna and Italian filmmaker Andrea Magnani's Italian/Ukraine co-production Jailbird.

Films in the Baltic competition, include the world premiere of Giedrius Tamosevicius and Vytautas V. Landsbergis's Lithuanian historical drama The Poet and Estonian sports drama Kalev, directed by Ove Musting, which will open the section.

The full selection by section is as follows:

Official Selection