Tallinn Black Nights will be celebrating its first documentary competition, Doc@PÖFF, featuring 11 titles—all of them international or world premieres. Ahead of the festival, running this year from November 8-24, I spoke to Marianna Kaat, curator of this brand-new section. Kaat is a prominent documentary director and producer in Estonia and founded her own firm, Baltic Film Production, in 1998. Alongside filmmaking and programming, she wears many other hats, including that of documentary lecturer at Tallinn University’s Baltic Film and Media School. In this interview, Kaat unpacks the line-up of this year’s competition, its raison d’être, and the work she has carried out with her fellow programmers.
Festivals
This year, Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) marked its 20th anniversary with—as described by its programmers—a lineup of highly political
In recent decades, the Locarno Film Festival has established itself as a premiere market for some of the more unusual experiments to come through the
While the Venice film festival is widely treated as an awards platform for starry auteur-driven dramas, its little-known secret is a modest but strong nonfiction selection. Even without counting the Wang Bing film in competition, which screened too late for many critics (including this one) to cover, this year’s crop was remarkable for the breadth and variety of the nonfiction approaches.
When good intentions meet bad assumptions on the film festival circuit Editor’s Note: The writers are the co-directors and executive producers of The
The intimacy and intricate care that BlackStar puts into the organization and accessibility of its annual film festival make it feel like a deeply considered project brought together by so many experienced and attentive organizers. The ability to facilitate joy and safety in a gathering can create exponential space for growth, a bending of space-time that gives folks true time to be free and travel across waves of distant visions. Amidst all the vibrancy and energy of the people of BlackStar, I tried to see as many films as possible and will mention here films that I saw for the first time with audiences. Like the talks, the focus of many of the films was survivorship—they asked how we propel ourselves through truth and ethical pursuit in an age of disintegration and global instability.
Two luminary filmmakers whose short films were highlighted at this year’s Cinemalibero, Sarah Maldoror and Nicolás Guillén Landrián, both emerged in the 1960s and were products of the anticolonial revolutionary movements that swept the Global South in the postwar period. Although Landrián’s work has received little exposure outside of Cuba up to this point, Maldoror has been well-known in certain circles for years, especially following the restoration and re-release of her landmark feature Sambizanga (1972) in 2020.
The global IDA membership includes professionals from diverse roles within the non-fiction field. We are documentary workers, professionals, thought leaders, and innovators from around the world, united by our passion for the non-fiction form. We celebrate the work of our members during the festival season and every day! With the upcoming BlackStar Film Festival, we are excited to celebrate our members who have films in the festival as directors, writers, producers, and in various other roles.
On a warm May evening, the opening ceremony of the 14th edition of the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF) was teeming with euphoria
Janay Boulos attended Sheffield DocFest to take meetings and network for the two feature documentaries she's producing. She shares tips for filmmakers looking to make the most of the festival landscape: “Pace yourself! It’s a marathon, not a race.”