Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Hampton and Goldshifteh Farahani are among 2,000 guests expected at Tallinn’s Black Nights Festival and its industry sidebar The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival – also known as PÖFF – marks a milestone this year as the festival celebrates its 30th anniversary and the first under the helm of artistic director Triin Tramberg as festival founder Tiina Lokk moves sideways to a strategic role within PÖFF. Tramberg’s own imprint on the festival as film curator and industry facilitator started more than 15 years ago. From program assistant to program coordinator, she has “played a central role in shaping the festival’s international profile,” said PÖFF in a statement, citing her achievements at the helm of the festival’s First Feature Films Competition, Discovery Campus educational strand attended annually by more than 70 professionals, and PÖFF Goes to Cannes event.
As founder and director of Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event’s Script Pool program, Tramberg nurtured films that went on grabbing major awards, such as 2023 Berlinale winner “20,000 Species of Bees” and Cannes Un Certain Regard top winner 2025 “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.” Unpacking to Variety her vision for the only FIAPF-accredited competitive film festival in Northern Europe – FIAPF’s so-called ”A” Festivals – Tramberg says her goal is “for PÖFF to keep going strong, especially amid the challenging times that we’re living and global political upheaval. PÖFF is bold, unpredictable yet accessible. We simply want audiences to keep coming to the cinemas and I hope new audiences will join in.” Speaking a few days before festival kick off on Nov. 6, Tramberg is bullish.
Case in point: Out of nearly 2,000 submissions, the artistic director and her team of nearly 20 programmers have selected 230 feature films – including 71 world premieres – for PÖFF’s main festival and sub-festival Just Film for children and youth. Altogether, with the PÖFF Shorts sub-festival, 489 films from 87 countries will screen over Nov. 9-22. Among the audience-pullers are 13 Oscar contenders for international feature film such as France’s “Minotaur,” Spain’s “La Bola Negra,” screening in the Best of Festivals, Lithuania’s “How to Divorce During the War,” competing in the Baltic film competition, and Latvia’s “Ulya,” set to open PÖFF Nov. 6.
The two Baltic films are playing as part of a wider Baltic cinema showcase taking in close to 40 feature films, shorts, classics and little gems from new auteurs, such as Janno Jürgens’ sophomore “No Me Without You” from Estonia, the only Baltic entry vying for the €20,000 ($22,400) Grand Prix. Regarding Viesturs Kairišs’ “Ulya,” Tramberg says: “Tiina and I saw it separately at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, then we met and said-this is our opener! We knew we would have a Baltic Focus at PÖFF.
This was an obvious choice as a marvellous feature with A-class festival potential, made as a co-production between Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Lithuania, showing what we can do in the Baltics and beyond.” “Giving Baltic cinema a central place in this anniversary program feels especially meaningful,”” Tramberg adds, eagerly tagging the Baltics as “the next Scandinavia.” “We work well together, complement each other. These collaborations help Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian films get better and reach out to a larger international audience.” Spanish, Latin American MomentumBesides the Baltics, Spain’s Basque region gets a special nod, both in the festival and industry sidebar Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event. High-profile titles to track include Patricia Ortega’s “Caballé” about opera diva Montserrat Caballé, set to world premiere in the official competition, and Daniel Romero’s psycho thriller “The Daughters” in the Midnight Shivers.
This is PÖFF’s second focus on a Spanish region after last year’s Catalan Spotlight. Tramberg praises PÖFF programmer of Spanish-speaking films, Javier García Puerto, curator of the Rebels with a Cause competition, who has gradually consolidated ties with top Spanish and Latin-American players and talent, as Spanish-language pics were enjoying a global renaissance. While musing on what she calls “the global over-drive of film production,” Tramberg says most PÖFF film entries this year hailed from Europe, followed by Latin America which offered one of the strongest and most varied crop to choose from, including from smaller countries.
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