For seventeen days, between November 7th and 23rd 2025, the Estonian capital turns into one of the most diverse and international film hubs on earth. Last year, the event saw nearly 100,000 admissions (the all-time highest number, no mean feat for a city with just 450,000 inhabitants), and 249 feature films from 81 countries. Let’s see whether the 29th edition of PÖFF (the Estonian acronym for which the Festival is affectionately known) 2025 can excel these numbers.

The a-list Fiapf-accredited Festival includes seven competitive strands, each one with an individual jury: the Official Selection Competition, the First Feature Competition, the Baltic Film Competition, the Rebels With A Cause Competition, the Critics’ Picks Competition, the Doc@PÖFF International Competition, and the brand new Doc@PÖFF Baltic Competition. The jury of the Official Competition is headed by Macedonian filmmaker Teona Strugar Mitevska, with American costume designer Debra McGire, Mongolian screenwriter Nomuunzul Turmunkh, American cinematographer Roberto Schaefer and Gweman producer Ingo Fliess also joining her.

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Highlights

The selection has strong Asian flavours, with six films coming from the largest continent in the world. This includes Jun Robles Lana’s Sisa, about “a mother robbed of everything but rage”. Lana is a very eclectic filmmaker and a familiar face at the event, with four of his films premiering at PÖFF in the past few years. Another highlight is Sengedorj Janchivdorj’s The Muralist, about “an exlied painter creating his final mural, confronting memory, loss, and the city that forgot him”: – the Mongolian director won the event’s top prize just last year with the filthy genius Silent City Driver.

Egyptian filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky is another name to look out for. He directed widely acclaimed Yomeddine, which premiered in Cannes’s Official Competition in 2018. This year he presents The Stories, “a tragicomedy encompasses political turmoil, football euphoria, and a wide range of Egyptian songs from 1967 to 1984”. The selection also includes a further film from Northern Africa, Nour Eddine Lakhmari’s Mira (from Morocco).

This is the first time in six years that a British film has made it into the Official Competition (the last one being Gerard Johnson’s Muscle in 2019, which earned Cavan Clerkin the Best Actor Prize). We look forward to watching Richard Hawkins, about “six disparate souls are sent on a secret government mission to make propaganda porn films for the boys on the front”.

Here is the full list of films in the Official Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival:

• 18 Holes to Paradise (João Nuno Pinto) – Portugal, Italy and Argentina;
• Duality (Abbas Nezamdoost; pictured at the top of this article) – Iran;
• Hungarian Wedding (Csaba Káel) – Hungary;
• LifeLike (Ali Vatansever) – Turkey, Greece and Romania;
• Mira (Nour Eddine Lakhmari) – Morocco;
• No Comment (Petter Næss) – Norway;
• Sisa (Jun Robles Lana) – Philippines;
• The Dashed Lines (Anxos Fazáns; pictured above) – Spain;
• The Frog and the Water (Thomas Stuber) – Germany;
• The Good Daughter (Júlia de Paz Solvas) – Spain;
• The Imaginary Dog and the Lying Cat (Yukihiro Morigaki) – Japan;
• The Moon is a Father of Mine (George Ovashvili) – Luxembourg, Turkey, Georgia, Germany, Czechia and Bulgaria;
• The Muralist (Sengedorj Janchivdorj) – Mongolia;
• The Stories (Abu Bakr Shawky) – Austria, France, Belgium, Egypt and Sweden;
• Think of England (Richard Hawkins) – United Kingdom;
• Veins (Raymond St-Jean) – Canada; and
• Versalles (Andrés Clariond) – Mexico.