The 28th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (a.k.a. PÖFF – Pimedate Ööde FilmiFestival) was held this year in its namesake Estonian city from 8 – 24 November. Since 2014, PÖFF has been one of 15 global A-list film festivals accredited by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). 

As film festivals go, PÖFF has a quirky quality, which renders it intimate and welcoming. Instead of a red carpet, there is a black one. A wolf is the emblematic creature of the fest, and volunteers are dressed up in wolf masks in the festival’s YouTube videos. One of the most striking qualities of the fest is that despite its vast scale, it remains supremely well-organised. Black Nights consists of six competition sections, including the latest addition, Doc@PÖFF, which focuses on documentaries. Additionally, there are the Best of Festivals, the Screen International Critics’ Choice and numerous other sections. Each year, there is a focus on a specific country or region. This year, it was Germany, and next year, it will be Catalan cinema. The festival also boasts an industry section known as Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, as well as two sub-festivals, Just Film and PÖFF Shorts.

But how does a film festival in its third decade maintain such a casual warmth yet also grow into one of the world’s more recognized cultural events in this field? If there is anyone who may know the answer, if not be responsible for such an outcome, it is the festival’s charismatic founder and Festival Director, Tiina Lokk. We caught up with Lokk during this year’s festival to trace its path from 1997 until today. She is a ubiquitous presence at the festival office in the Nordic Hotel Forum, where she is typically seen talking to various people on-site or on her phone.

Initially, the focus of the conversation was on how the festival started and the oft-told story that it began as some sort of protest.

“It was [a kind of protest], but maybe it was more a reaction to the situation in the middle of the 90s in Estonia. It was so sad. Most of the cinemas were closed, and the market was full of Hollywood and cheap Chinese Kung Fu movies. We wanted to create a festival to show films from other countries and bring them to the market. I don’t have anything against Hollywood entertainment cinema, but for me, the film world is full of different kinds of colours. We didn’t have any festival tradition because, in Soviet times, there was only the Moscow Film Festival.”

The start was my distribution company, which I had already established before the first edition. That meant I had a network of people who trusted me. During the first years, we started with Nordic films and some German and French as well. The first edition was made up of 29 films, and the opening film was Aki Kaurismäki’s “Drifting Clouds”. We had 7,000 admissions, which was a huge number in those days. This year, there are around 250 full-length films, including documentaries and around 350 short films from 81 countries. So far, it seems like the admission numbers will be higher than last year when there were 80,000 tickets sold.”

The festival seems to be growing constantly. Still, there don’t seem to be any worries that it will become too large. So far, it is not a problem since the screenings are never empty. For instance, this year, it was especially good because most of the competition premieres have been sold out. We have to satisfy both the industry and the audience. We cannot be too arty, but on the other hand, we don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction either.”

From the very beginning, we have worked with the directors. We always have auteur films in focus, but there is a system in place now where our main competition has more audience-friendly films looking for distribution. On the other hand, we have the Rebels with a Cause section, which is dedicated to experimental cinema.”

Javier Garcia Puerto, the curator of the Rebels with a Cause section, said that many of the section’s favourite films from last year landed distribution deals as well, thanks to PÖFF, but obviously on a smaller scale, “Yes, yes, that is true. With my background as a film critic and film theorist, I love hardcore arthouse films, but at the same time, I know that cinema is made for the audience.”

The challenges of becoming an A-list festival

Black Nights is one of the few festivals that was founded by a woman who is also still in charge and has several women in high positions. But Lokk doesn’t think this makes the festival stand out. “I don’t think [it does], but I agree with you that it is very rare that a woman is in charge of such a big festival, and even more rare even that one person founded a festival that became an A-list category festival in such a short time”.

Lokk has been playing the long game and expressed how she now feels like this work is paying off, “The industry sector we had in place before we received the A-list ranking [from FIAPF] was very small. It was mainly for supporting countries and the co-production market. What we built during the last 10 years is an entirely new system. We’ve been building a house, stone by stone, and now, with the new documentary section and the classics section, the house is finished. The funding was always one-third of public funding, one-third of ticket sales, and the last third from partners and sponsors. The latter is the most difficult one in the current economy.”

She then addressed the issue of funding again and how it ties in with the duration of the festival, “We have been thinking about the length [of the festival] for some time. The thing is that the weekends bring the best revenue; this way, we get three of them, but on the other hand, the festival is too long. It’s difficult, but we might have an idea to solve that problem. In reality, we never had enough money, but we managed anyway. One of the factors is that we have more than 600 volunteers [including interns]. More than any other big festival.”

The “Deaf Lovers” controversy

There is plenty of political pressure on film festivals right now, and many film festivals bow to that as soon as there are any kinds of protests. This year, there was this vicious campaign against Boris Guts’ “Deaf Lovers”. 

“It was really bad, and I’m sad because the film is actually against the war and has nothing to do with Russian propaganda. The film is full of existential metaphors, not war metaphors. After I spoke to the director, his intentions were even more obvious. The Ukrainians who protested hadn’t even seen the film. We removed the Standing with Ukraine part to calm things down but kept the film in the official competition. The director received death threats, and we couldn’t let him walk around in the city on his own.

The measures taken were effective in showing the festival’s strength and willingness to stand up for its programming. Lokk talked about the attempts to throw the premiere into disarray.

“There was an attempt to disrupt [the premiere]. The protesters encouraged people with the same views to buy tickets to the premiere. Still, most of the tickets were bought by our regular audience, and the protesters quickly noticed they were in the minority. There was a good Q&A afterwards, and most people concluded that there was much ado about nothing.

Preserving the PÖFF House for the Future 

Looking back on this year’s edition with all its challenges, one can still conclude that it was yet another successful edition of Black Nights during a time when many festivals face a range of significant problems from financial to political and logistical. 

From the outside, it looks like PÖFF is ready to take on the future, especially considering Lokk’s analogy that ‘the house’ is finished and seems to have achieved its perfect form. What remains is to maintain the condition of the house to ensure even more captivating experiences at future editions of the festival in Tallinn, both at cinemas that are directly involved with Black Nights and their associated hospitality partners.