Tallinn’s PÖFF Turns 30: How a Film Fest in a Country of 1.3 Million People Became an A-List Event

What a difference three decades make! Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) is celebrating the opening of its 30th edition on Friday, which will screen 230 feature and 259 short films from 87 countries. Its inaugural edition in 1997 had shown a much more modest number of movies – 24 titles from Nordic countries, Germany and France.

Back then, the number of cinemas in Estonia, which had declared its independence in 1991 amid the collapse of the USSR, was still minuscule. And festival film admissions totaled around 6,000, which was seen as a success. Last year, in contrast, PÖFF admissions hit nearly 95,000.

All this growth has made Tallinn a fixture on the festival circuit for more and more industry folks, and it has elevated it to Northern Europe’s largest film festival. In 2014, also boosted its reputation further by earning FIAPF A-list accreditation, putting it into the company of such venerable fests as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Sundance, Toronto, Karlovy Vary and Locarno.

PÖFF founder and CEO Tiina Lokk has been the visionary and driving force behind the festival’s arrival in the top tier. Earlier this year, she shifted her focus to overall strategic and developmental direction, giving up her role as festival director, with her daughter Triin Tramberg being promoted to the role of artistic director.

Given its standing today, you may be surprised to hear that Lokk’s idea to launch a film festival in Tallinn wasn’t seen as a slam dunk. And that included her own skepticism. “I had deep doubts,” she tells THR. “Even though I wanted to create the festival because I am a film critic, theorist and historian, and the biggest dream of every film critic is to put together a festival where you can pick your favorite films.”

But Estonia didn’t have a film festival tradition, given that the Soviet Union had only the Moscow Film Festival, which wasn’t even taking place every year. “We had a kind of rolling festival, the All-Union Film Festival, for all 15 republics of the Soviet Union,” she recalls. “Every year it took place in the capital of a different republic. And in my lifetime, I saw only one festival in Tallinn [in 1982], and Estonia was the final republic to host it.”

No surprise then that, as Look puts it, “I wasn’t sure that Estonia was ready to have a regular festival and that it was needed.” After all, the country is quite small, with a population of 1.3 million today.

Also, the post-Soviet years brought a focus on all sorts of challenges and reforms, “but for cinema, it wasn’t a very hopeful time,” she shares. “Nobody knew what to do with cinema, and there wasn’t even money for it in the Ministry of Culture budget. There was even one year when there were zero feature films made.”

The infrastructure for cineasts was minimal. “In the middle of the ’90s, we had three or four cinemas for all of Estonia, and these cinemas were showing only Hollywood blockbusters and Chinese B-grade kung-fu films,” Lokk recalls.

At the same time, foreign film shoots came into Estonia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, driven by an interest in locations that hadn’t been used before and the affordability.

Lokk fell on deaf ears with many politicians with her pitch for a festival or an improved screen infrastructure in Tallinn. “We don’t need that in Estonia,” she recalls a typical response. “If you want to go to cinemas, go to Helsinki or go to Paris. And when I tried to tell them that the cinema world is actually much bigger and much more colorful than only Hollywood and China, they said: ‘Who cares?’ And since it was clear we couldn’t compete with Hollywood, there was a big question mark about whether we needed a national cinema at all. The few Estonian features that were made then were always compared with Hollywood films, which is ridiculous.”

Lokk ran her own distribution company, FilmaMAX, back then and had built an international network that ended up encouraging her to follow her festival dream. “The embassies in Estonia with whom I worked supported me and pushed me to start it,” she tells THR.

She started looking for a hotel venue, only to face rejection after rejection. “Finally, my last option agreed [to do it] and be a sponsor, so we started the festival.”

Money was scarce, with the fest getting some financial support from the diplomatic corps and a “very, very small” amount from the state, Lokk emphasizes. “My friends and classmates also gave us some money.”

In the early days of the Tallinn festival, attendees may not have only had their eyes on film screening schedules, panel discussions and social events, like today, but also on things that these days seem reserved for on-screen action. “In the middle of the ’90s, there were bombs blowing up cars in the street,” Lokk recalls. “The mafia was around. It was a different time.”

In the beginning, the festival took place in early December. “On the festival calendar, that was an absolutely empty place,” Lokk recalls. But soon, the fest moved to November. But no, it was not because of the weather. “November is actually the most hated time in Estonia,” the fest founder tells THR. “It is 0 degrees, and all my life, my dream used to be not to have to be in Tallinn in November. But because November is dark, my experience with distribution was that it was the best-selling time for cinemas.”

Tallinn has, of course, made this a key point in its branding as well. The festival’s English-language name includes those Black Nights, and so does its Estonian acronym PÖFF, which stands for Pimedate Ööde filmifestival, which translates as Black Nights Film Festival.

The festival is also known for swapping the traditional red carpet for its signature black carpet. That tradition dates back to 2016 and symbolizes the dark nights of November in Estonia. But it also comes with a touch of self-irony, as organizers like to mention with a wink, saying the festival lacks both the financial resources and technical requirements for the glamour of a traditional red carpet.

And don’t expect PÖFF to ever go for a super-competitive summer slot on the festival circuit. “If we [scheduled] the festival, let’s say, in May or June and had a White Nights festival, nobody would be going to the cinemas,” Lokk explains. “Box office is playing quite a big role in our budget. And we are still not very popular with politicians and are struggling to get money [from them].”

Not that she is crying wolf. Which brings us to a final key element of the PÖFF brand – its symbol and mascot, said wolf. “All the great festivals have local animals, but most were picked already,” Lokk recalls. “The bear belonged to Berlin. The Lion is Venice’s. So okay, the wolf had not been picked. And the wolf is actually a legendary animal in all our fairy tales and even epics.”

Asked about the wolf’s character, the festival CEO highlights: “It is an ego player but at the same time a big team player. There is very strict organization in wolf society, and so we looked up all the legends about wolves. I saw a documentary about them, Mother Wolf, and one of the last shots in this documentary was when a lonely mother wolf was howling under the full moon. So, I said it has to be our local animal.”

The festival can indeed count on what is dubbed the “Wolf Pack,” a PÖFF community connecting film enthusiasts, culture supporters, companies, guests, as well as volunteers and interns who all contribute time, money, or both to make the festival a success every year.

Speaking of successes. The inaugural Tallinn fest’s opening film came from a big name. It was Drifting Clouds from Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki, who was honored with the PÖFF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. The film will screen again this year as part of the festival’s 30th anniversary celebration. And the fest once again has attracted such stars as Tim Blake Nelson and Goldshifteh Farahani and their films.

Lokk is proud that the festival has supported the Estonian, and the broader Baltic, film industry, and vice versa, with films from the region now regularly traveling to big festivals around the globe and winning awards. Since 2008, PÖFF has showcased projects from the region in its Baltic Film Competition. Last year, it also launched a Baltic documentary competition.

It has pushed into other areas as well. The festival’s kids and youth-focused Just Film program debuted its Industry Days in 2023, the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic event industry strand has continuously broadened and deepened its offerings, and PÖFF has been strengthening its educational initiatives, Lokk highlights.

Helping celebrate its three decades this year will be three Tallinn exhibitions. “Stars in the Night” pays tribute to PÖFF’s guests through 20 portraits spanning the festival’s history, while “30 PÖFFs. 30 Posters. 30 Stories” showcases all of the festival’s posters for the first time, “telling a story of growth, creativity and the courage to stand out,” organizers say. Finally, “30 PÖFFs, 30 Years of Stories, Thousands of Films and a Million Memories” is designed to “capture the festival’s atmosphere” through moments that have shaped its history.

Given all this history and expansion into new areas over the years, this seemed like a good time to reduce her workload and let others step up, Lokk says. “The festival has become big, I am getting older, and there is a new generation,” she tells THR. “It is very important that the head of programming is feeling the pulse of the audience.”

So, what lies ahead for the Tallinn festival will partly depend on any changes that Tramberg may pursue. For now, she wants to keep a close eye on “what works and what doesn’t.” She also tells THR: “Of course, I have ideas about what the festival can become and where the roof is, but the main goal is that the festival stays relevant and that, in today’s society, people continue to come to a festival and to the cinemas. This is a moment to explore emotions together.”

And while the duo may not have any immediate big changes to share, Lokk signals that she continues, as she has done throughout the history of PÖFF, to look for future opportunities. “We have our 30th edition this year,” she says. “Now there are the next 10 years where we have to think about what direction we are taking.”