This year, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival will screen 232 features and 230 short films from 75 countries. As of today, the full PÖFF program is public and ticket sales have begun. In total, the festival, which opens on November 11, has 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 art 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 Tallinn, ranging Pedro Almodóvar regular, Cecilia Roth, who was named the best actress in Europe in 1999, to Scooter frontman H.P. Baxxter.

The opening film of the festival, Leon Prudovsky's dramedy My Neighbor Adolf will introduce the program of this year's Focus Country Israel, where 15 films will be screened.

In the new program the Best of Fest you can see the most important films of the year, including the winner of the international competition at Sundance, Utama by Alejandro Loayza Gris, a Golden Bear winner at the Berlinale, Alcarras by Carla Simón, the winner of the Golden Lion in Venice, Laura Poitras' All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, the Cannes-premeiring, Close from Lukas Dhont and many other acclaimed works from the past year's festival circuit.

Also slated for Oscar nominations 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. 19 films in the PÖFF program will be considered for the Oscar for non-English language film.

New 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 program 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).

Legendary German actor Udo Kier will receive the first of this year's three Lifetime Achievement Award. The announcement was made at the Opening Press Conference of PÖFF26, which can now be viewed online.

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival will take place this year from 11 to 27 November.

The festival is presented by Elisa, Nordic Hotel Forum and Toyota. Major sponsors are Forus, National Geographic, Postimees and Cramo.

Full Programme Details
 

Official Selection - In Competition

First Feature - In Competition

First Feature - Out of Competition

Critics’ Picks - In Competition

Critics’ Picks - Out of Competition

Rebels with a Cause - In Competition

Rebels with a Cause - Out of Competition

Baltic Film Competition

In Focus: Israel

Spotlight: Brazil

Best of Fest

Screen International Critics’ Choice

Doc@PÖFF

Midnight Shivers

Estonian Olympic Committee Sports Film Programme

Environment Agency Environmental Film Programme

Full details of all films from Black Nights, Just Film and PÖFF Shorts can be found online at https://poff.ee/en/programmes/.

PRESS OFFICE CONTACTS
 

International communication: Will Smith - william.smith@poff.ee / +372 5594 5443

Estonian communication: Tiit Tuumalu - tiit.tuumalu@poff.ee.

Lifetime Achievement Award Winner Udo Kier in Opening Film My Neighbor Adolf

Wolves on the Black Carpet