Lifetime Achievement recipient Udo Kier in My Neighbor Adolf Photo: Courtesy of POFF |
Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has now announced the full programme for this year's event, which will run from November 11 to 27. The festival will screen 232 features and 230 short films from 75 countries.
There are five competition and 13 special programs featuring 78 world and 48 international premieres - a new record. For the first time, a new competition program Critics' Picks is planned - covering the most recent trends in film selected by the experienced film critics and theorists in the festival’s programming team.
Between PÖFF and Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, more than a thousand guests will arrive in the Estonian capital for the event
The opening film, Leon Prudovsky's dramedy My Neighbor Adolf will introduce the programme of this year's Focus Country Israel, from which15 films will be screened.
A new strand, the Best of Fest, features some of the critical successes of the year, including the Sundance winner Utama by Alejandro Loayza Gris, Berlinale Golden Bear winner Alcarràs, by Carla Simón, Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, by Laura Poitras, and Lukas Dhont's Close, which premiered in Cannes.
Other key inclusions are Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, Martin McDonaugh's The Banshees of Inisherin, Darren Aronofsky's The Whale, Park Chan-wook's Decision To Leave and Sam Mendes' Empire Of Light. Nineteen films in the PÖFF program will be considered for the Oscar for non-English language film.
Special programs are dedicated to Estonia’s Lembit Ulfsak and Bruno O`Ya, as well as Belarusian resistance films and a spotlight on Brazilian cinema.
This year, the jury of the Official Selection competition programme includes Ildikó Enyedi (Hungary), Hayedeh Safiyari (Iran), Adam Balazs (Hungary), Andreas Kleinert (Germany) and Bijaya Jena (India), and the jury of the First Feature competition program includes Sebastian Meise (Austria), Therese Malvar (Philippines), Georg Georgi (Germany), Michael Idov (USA) and Pippa Cross (UK). The jury of the Baltic film competition program consists of Katriel Schory (Israel), Augusto Sandino (Colombia) and Maria Pirkkalainen (Finland). The jury of the Critics' Picks competition program is François-Pierre Clavel (France), Pinchas Schatz (Israel) and Riina Sildos (Estonia). The Rebels with a Cause Jury is made up of Lily Idov (USA), Monica Mecs (Hungary) and Jean des Forêts (France).
German actor Udo Kier will receive the first of this year's three Lifetime Achievement Award.
You can read our coverage here.