The 24th, hybrid, Black Nights Film Festival is off to a spectacular start. Read along for some special recommendations in today's screenings.
Months of working from home, of zoom-meetings, of being unsure whether a physical festival was ever going to take place this year, culminated in the special opening ceremony at Coca-Cola Plaza last night. Audiences, spread over several cinema halls, experienced audiovisual poetic treats by Alyona Movko and Maarja Nuut & Ruum, a theatrical allegory of these times by Ingmar Jõela and this year's scandalous opening film.
The Bruno O'Ya Award for talented young actor went to Reimo Sagor, who talked about the importance of dreaming, about dreamers, but also commented on the current state of Estonia's society, where some dreamers' dreams can only exist while others' dreams are crushed.
Festival director Tiina Lokk spoke with gratitude towards all who contribute to the festival, that we can still come together and enjoy culture while urging us to take wearing masks with humour, yet seriousness. In other words; wear a mask, keep yourself safe, keep others safe, keep PÖFF safe - all while having fun and enjoying the festival.
We hope to see you on this first day of the festival in one of the cinema halls or in the comfort of your own home via kino.poff.ee (NB: only available in Estonia). And we are very pleased that already on this first Friday, we are honoured with film guests joining us for a talk after the screening of their film.
You can find the full programme here. Or read along for a few special film recommendations to get your festival week started:
15:30|Coca-Cola Plaza 2
In Black Night Film Festival's new programme of Environmental Films is the portrait of one of today's icons of climate activism - the young, Swedish Greta Thurnberg. Director Nathan Grossman managed to spot her rise to global following early on. The intimate film takes us along on Greta's journey from the very start; when she sat alone in a strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament, until her performance at the UN Climate Action Summit; where she arrived by sailboat over the Atlantic.
16:30|Coca-Cola Plaza 6
19:30|Virtual Hall
+ Q&A with director Giedrė Žickytė and producer Uldis Cekulis
The Jump will screen as part of the Baltic Competition and talks about a seemingly ordinary Lithuanian sailor, Simas Kudirka, who jumped a Russian ship to the US in 1970, in hopes for political asylum. Yet his fate was to become a political prisoner for 10 years in a Siberian gulag. Fascinated by his story, director Giedrė Žickytė tracked down Simas Kudirka and invited him to relive the incredible adventure on the same ship (which took the crew a big effort and years to accomplish.)
17:00|Apollo Solaris 4
20:00|Virtual Hall
Separated by barbed wire, two men, one a young French gendarme, the other Josep Bartolí, a Spanish resistance fighter, illustrator and artist, make friends. It's 1939 and they are in a refugee camp fleeing Franco’s dictatorship. This hand-drawn film masterfully tells the story of Bartolí’s escape with expressive tableaus teeming with visual poetry.
20:15|Coca-Cola Plaza 7
Seemingly stuck in a dying business and bleak economic perspectives in contemporary Athens, Nikos is merely continuing his family's profession as a tailor. Until a negative event pushes him to reinvent himself and the business in ways that give perspective and hope. Tailor is the first feature film by Greek-German film director and writer, Sonia Liza Kenterman, who is interested in emotionally charged stories about ordinary people forced to make choices due to extraordinary external circumstances.
20:30|Coca-Cola Plaza 8|23:30|Virtual Hall
In Fugitive Dreams, two homeless people go on a strange and bewildering journey across middle America, meeting a cast of bizarre characters searching for compassion and healing. A trainride into the heart and soul of the U.S.A.
21:00|Coca-Cola Plaza 2
Amusement parks might be places you relate to romance; visiting them with your lover, eating cotton candy, going for a ride. Yet the way love relates to amusement parks in Jumbo, you won't expect. Jumbo is an eccentric, high-adrenaline adventure, telling the story of Jeanne, who collects rubbish in the amusement park at night and falls in love with one of the machines.
21:15|Apollo Solaris 3
A grand movie cast-wise (Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci), a small and intimate piece when it comes to the contents. Firth and Tucci play an older, very loving, gay couple. Meandering through the English Lake District, in an old campervan, they head towards an inevitable future.