The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (8-24 November) has announced the complete selection of the official competition programme for its 28th edition. It will showcase 18 features from 23 countries, 11 of which will bow as world premieres, six as international ones and one as a festival premiere. According to festival director and main competition curator Tiina Lokk, the films utilise all kinds of genres and explore different topics, with those featuring issues related to old age and coming of age standing out as particularly trending ones.

Regarding the filmmaking approach used in the selected movies, she commented: “Being a film theorist myself, and coming from a generation of great, audiovisually minded directors, I am very happy to find submitted films in which the plot develops not only through causal narrative, but also through images and symbols. However, the competition also includes dramas with a linear storyline that are psychologically complex. For me, they are both appetising, and the official selection has them both.”

Greek filmmaker Dennis Iliadis, best known for his 2009 remake of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left, comes along with an amalgam of horror, thriller and dark comedy set in 1990s Athens, which explores the topics of love, manipulation and control. Buzzheart has already had a national release in Greece. Visual artist, animator and filmmaker Ann Marie Fleming presents Can I Get a Witness, a science-fiction dystopia based on the rule that every person must end their life at the age of 50, while that ultimate sacrifice has to be documented by teenage artists. The cast features Keira Jang, Joel Oulette and Sandra Oh, among others, and the film premiered at Toronto.

After the success of Minsk (2022), Boris Guts returns to Tallinn with Deaf Lovers, a story about two people coming from Russia and Ukraine who try to become a couple in Istanbul. Seyfettin Tokmak presents Empire of the Rabbits, a coming-of-age story set among poverty-stricken people. The real and the imaginary collide in Girl America, a film by Viktor Tauš that revolves around a girl from an orphanage who invents her “other self” to talk to and quarrel with.

Out of Control by French actress-turned-filmmaker Anne Le Ny is a love story where a seemingly stable marriage is put to the test after 15 years. The cast is led by Omar Sy, Vanessa Paradis, José Garcia and Élodie Bouchez, and it comes to Tallinn as a world premiere. In Nir Bergman’s newest film, Pink Lady, an Orthodox Jewish family faces a threat in the form of blackmail. Another carefully curated life, that of a German organist, is shattered when she finds out about her husband’s involvement in a corruption scandal in The Exalted, the newest film by Latvian helmer Juris Kursietis, whose previous feature, Oleg [+lee también:
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The selection also includes Koo Sang-beom’s The Loop, Petersen Vargas’s Some Nights I Feel Like Walking, Sengedorj Janchivdorj’s Silent City Driver, Sebastián Parra R’s Seed of the Desert and Vinod Kapr’s Pyre. Four more titles in the official competition were revealed previously: Eran Riklis’ Reading Lolita in Tehran, Margherita Ferri’s The Boy with Pink Pants, Teemu Nikki’s 100 Litres of Gold and Jaak Kilmi’s Shadow (see the news).

Lastly, the official selection competition jury members have also been revealed. The jury will be presided over by German filmmaker Christoph Hochhäusler. The rest of the members include producer Bianca Balbuena from the Philippines, her Lithuanian colleague Marija Razgutė, French filmmaker Jawad Rhalib and Lithuanian helmer Tomas Vengris.

Here is the full list of selected films:

100 Litres of Gold – Teemu Nikki (Finland)
Buzzheart – Dennis Iliadis (Greece)
Can I Get a Witness – Ann Marie Fleming (Canada)
Deaf Lovers – Boris Guts (Estonia/Serbia)
Empire of the Rabbits – Seyfettin Tokmak (Turkey/Croatia/Mexico/Lebanon)
Girl America – Viktor Tauš (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Switzerland)
Out of Control – Anne Le Ny (France)
Pink Lady – Nir Bergman (Israel/Italy)
Pyre – Vindo Kapri (India)
Reading Lolita in Tehran – Eran Riklis (Israel/Italy)
Seed of the Desert – Sebastián Parra R (Colombia)
Shadow – Jaak Kilmi (Estonia)
Silent City Driver – Sengedorj Janchivdorj (Mongolia)
Some Nights I Feel Like Walking – Petersen Vargas (Philippines/Singapore/Italy)
The Boy with Pink Pants – Margherita Ferri (Italy)
The Exalted – Juris Kursietis (Latvia/Estonia/Greece)
The Loop – Koo Sang-beom (South Korea)
The Mousetrap – Serhii Kastornykh (Ukraine)