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Year Living Innovatively
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When the 17-day-long festival rollercoaster reached its destination at the end of November 2020, it was clear that it had been a ride to remember. The fact that the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, aka PÖFF, succeeded in holding a hybrid film festival with international guests amidst a pandemic, keeping everyone safe and building up a new online environment with an even smaller budget than usual, felt like a miracle itself. By PÖFF
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ven if the physical, collective experience in cinema halls and screening rooms remains the main aspiration of Black Nights Film Festival in the future, it was clear from very early on for the team that this would not be the reality in 2020,” said festival director Tiina Lokk on the decision to organise the festival in a hybrid format. This essentially meant organising two events, as there were over 600 screenings in cinemas all over Estonia (Tallinn, Tartu, Kohtla-Järve, Narva and Jõhvi), while a new online environment was developed in cooperation with Shift72 and Elisa. This also meant translating the physical festival experience to online: meeting the filmmakers and festival team members via video interviews, talking to all the filmmakers via video chat (service by Vialog), introducing most of the film
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screenings, both in cinemas and online, with an introductory Q&A with filmmakers before films. Having seen steady growth in international guest attendance and audiences over the last years (80 000 in 2018, and 90 000 in 2019), Black Nights had the difficult task of fulfilling the expectations of various groups: the industry, the audience, and the press. In the context of many A-class film festivals cancelling their editions throughout 2020 or not holding any competition programmes, it was a challenge to deliver a high-quality programme, present new talent, draw international attention to competitions, bring filmmakers to Tallinn during a pandemic and enable an exchange between the audiences and filmmakers. Surprisingly enough, the festival had a record number of world and international premieres (accordingly 38 and 32) in its var-
ious sections, and also a very successful German focus. Due to film rights, geo-blocking, screening period (2-5 days per film) and audience limitations per screening had to be applied to the films screened to regular audiences in Estonia, while most of the films in the four competition programmes were available to professionals and press all over the world. The 290 online screenings for professionals with global access made 9800 viewings from all of the continents, including Europe, Asia, North and Latin America, Australia and even New Zealand. Generating over a hundred reviews in the international press, the programme was received extremely well by critics and the industry with a record number of deals announced already during the festival. Many films from previous year’s Competition programmes have entered the award circuit of festivals - nominated and awarded by Goya, BAFTA, German film Awards, etc. presented as national Oscar entries or nominated for the European Film Award. The festival worked hand in hand with the German Film Institute, Rosskino in Russia, I AGICI in Italy and European Film Promotion introducing up and coming young talents from various programmes to the world. Tiina Lokk summed up the year: “We are so happy having pulled it off, as the
