Across the street from the hotel where the jury was housed stands what was one of the tallest buildings in the region, a modernist block of concrete, steel and glass rising above the medieval walls of the old town over which it looms. Built as a gateway for Europeans to be able to enter the Soviet Union as cultural tourist, its 23rd floor holds the remnants of a darker mission, with the detritus of the surveillance state still visible with the tangled wires, smashed Word War II-era looking telephones, and other implements whereby visitors were subject to being watched while ostensibly getting a glimpse of life behind the iron curtain.
In the decades since the rapid abandonment of these secret rooms the transformation of Tallinn has been nothing short of extraordinary. Now firmly part of the European community, on social and political grounds the country very much looks Westwards, with one of its most famous exports, Skype, illustrating an almost preternatural desire to facilitate communication on a global basis, making the stultifying behavior of the Soviet era that much more anathema to this robust and resilient culture.
It’s this spirit of both gathering and the celebration of difference that makes the Black Nights festival one of the most engaging in the world. Estonia is in so many ways nestled between larger cultural and political centers, yet it manages to play a role on the international stage far more than its relatively small size would normally evoke. The film festival showcases hundreds of films sourced globally, including dozens of world premieres, festival favorites, student showcases and more.
Given its complicated history, having been occupied by Russian, Swedish, Danish, Polish, and other Germanic countries throughout its history, one would think there would be a more militant nationalistic individualism. Instead, despite each of these foreign powers leaving their mark via the remarkable architecture that dots the city, the impulse is the opposite, creating a space whereby all these various communities are welcomed to gather, drawing from dozens of countries and illustrating not only commonality but also a celebration of difference.
Our days consisted of one or two films in the morning, followed by wanderings in the old town or simply hanging out. While our fellow Estonian jury Member Martin Oja headed back south to screen most of the slate in his home town, I spent considerable time with Venice and Yerevan-based Alexander Melyan, which proved to be one of the most wonderful aspects of the entire trip. Grabbing food from pancake houses, exotic meat purveyors and even waffle burger-stands proved to be a delight, and Alex even joined me as I did my ubiquitous record-store reconnaissance (listening to the exceptional “Groove of ESSR: Funk, Disco and Jazz from Soviet Estonia” vinyl compilation as I type).
Having been at Black Night a dozen years ago, it was a rich treat to return, not only to pick-up replacement wooden butter knives from the craft store across from the Parisian hot chocolate place, but also to explore the waterfront, visiting the concrete monstrosity Linahall, a graffiti-festooned Olympic venue that lays abandoned if still well trafficked externally.
A walking tour through the old town showed spaces I hadn’t previously visited, including the eerie, looming monk figures atop the buttress wall, and this proved invaluable as I later became a guide of sorts myself, repeating the same journey for those that hadn’t participated. It’s a glorious, quirky, quite beautiful place, and while we were pretty much cloistered even more so than my previous time (where a bus tour took out outside of the radius of our venues), it was quite fun to become normalized to being in proximity of such a wonderful space.
Our jury slate this year focused on the First Features completion, drawing upon titles from neighboring countries like Poland, former Soviet siblings like Kyrgyzstan, and far-flung locales like Taiwan. Some were filmmakers truly making their first step into features, others far more experienced with episodic work or documentary that were making their foray into fiction.
The result was a diverse slate that spanned from the middling to the remarkable, the end result being a pretty fascinating overview of the current state of emerging filmmakers. With certain titles the ambition overwhelmed the execution, the tonal swings proving exhausting more than effective. For others, the jump from what clearly felt like fodder for a short film to feature length proved a bridge too far, the relatively sparse narrative and stilted performance ineffective when drawn out past the 90 minute mark.
For other titles, however, there truly was a sense of welcome discovery. Take Quenti Hsu’s Admission, a taught, contained story of a family attempting via any means necessary to enroll their child into a prestigious educational academy. Set within a luxurious hotel suite, the film’s claustrophobic setting and dialogue-heavy portrait could easily have felt too broadly theatrical, yet thanks to committed performances, a Rashomon-ish structure, and deeply culturally specific elements that nonetheless resonate universally, it’s an exciting film to have experiences.
Melik Kurus’ Dump of Untitled Pieces is not nearly as ungainly as its title, but this Frances Ha-ish film managed to make the most of its art-school pretensions. Amusingly, it echoed another film I saw during 2024’s Munich Festival, Camilla Guttner’s The Academy, joining what’s no doubt an inexhaustible well of semi-autobiographical films about artists misunderstood by ornery professors with a protagonist lauded for sticking with their aesthetic drive.
There was plenty of trauma on display, and the casual use of sexual assault in many of the films was certainly different than similar titles crafted in North America. In fact, it was this side of the globe, from both Hemispheres, that was absent in our slate. So while the draw was geographically vast, there was still a significant quarter of our planet whose voices were not heard.
Samuel Abrhams’ Lady had all the ingredients for a true hit, and as the sardonic mock-doc played out I had high hopes. Unfortunately, despite its grand setting and committed performances it never quite gelled, proving just how challenging it is to follow in the footsteps of masters like (Lord) Christopher Guest without faltering.
Kat Steppe’s Sunday Ninth uses a mix of non-professionals and a core acting ensemble to explore aging and deteriorating memories, feeling like a cinematic version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Voices of Old People.” As with many of the films the idea is strong while the execution proved to be a bit lacking, but there’s still plenty to celebrate about the attempt.
Pascal Schuh’s Interior is perhaps the most divisive film that we screened, a hateful little thing about voyeurism and exploitation that leans into Haeneke’s aesthetic while coming across as more puerile than profound. Still, kudos to the production designer who procured a diarrhea-coloured couch that serves as a kind of criminal coffin, proving that even the furniture selection can be the stuff of nightmares.
Despite its vertiginous title, Christian Bonke’s Hercules Falling was the film that soared the most. Anchored by a brilliant performance by Dar Salim, this quiet yet raw rumination upon post-traumatic stress is exquisitely local yet deeply global in its narrative. It’s no surprise given the titanic legacy that Danish cinema has provided over the last few decades, but Bonke proves here equal to the task of navigating such a film that easily could have devolved into artifice or emotional manipulation.
Once again this is a film mixing professional and non-professional performers, but here there’s a documentary precision and true feeling of verisimilitude on display, rather than simply providing a kind of loose, gritty realism that deflates any sense of dramatic precision. Simply yet effectively lensed, the film is quiet yet intense, never succumbing to histrionics to make its ideas clear.
It was an easy decision to make to celebrate this terrific work, which is hardly Bonke’s first after a decades-long career, but an exciting fiction-forward debut nonetheless. If there’s one film from our slate deserving of breaking through and making a splash on the international stage it is this one, and I couldn’t have been more proud to have played a small role in amplifying its qualities.
Jason Gorber
©FIPRESCI