Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (POFF, November 8-24) has selected 11 documentaries for its inaugural Doc@POFF competition, including six world premieres and five international premieres.
World premieres include Yana Sad’s third feature With My Open Lungs, the filmmaker’s personal journey of blossoming love and her partner’s cancer diagnosis against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Scroll down for the full list of Doc@POFF titles
Russian filmmaker Sad left her home country in 2022 for political reasons following the invasion, and is now based in Germany. With My Open Lungs is Sad’s third film after 2019 feature documentary To The Left – to Red, and 2020 short Regime Change.
Also selected for Doc@POFF is Yang Lizhu’s world premiere Never Too Late. Chinese director Yang’s debut feature investigates her grandparents’ divorce after 60 years of marriage.
One Estonian film makes the selection, also having its world premiere: Kullar Viimne’s Torn, about a divorced man building the tallest observation tower in his region in an effort to attract potential partners.
The Doc@POFF selection team is led by Estonian documentary director Marianna Kaat, alongside filmmaker Mike Arnott, programmer Edvinas Puksta and head of Youth and Children’s Film Festival Just Film Mikk Granstrom.
“We want to offer films for both the eye and the heart, as well as to attract those audiences who have not been particularly enthusiastic about documentaries in the past,” said Kaat.
The Doc@POFF strand has been created to give non-fiction its own platform in the POFF programme, says festival director Tiina Lokk. “Although feature documentaries have always been welcome in our sub-programmes, the number of submissions has significantly increased in recent years,” said Lokk.
The documentary competition joins POFF’s other competitive sections: Official Selection, First Feature, Baltic Film, Critics’ Picks and Rebels with a Cause.
Doc@POFF 2024 selection
With My Open Lungs (Ger) dir. Yana Sad*
Never Too Late (China) dir. Yang Lizhu*
Black Gold (Por) dir. Takashi Sugimoto*
Full Support (Isr) dir. Michal Cohen
The Watchman (Fr-Bel) dir. Victoire Bonin
Torn (Est) dir. Kullar Viimne*
Murmuring Hearts (Lith-Fr) dir. Vytautas Puidokas*
Freight (Switz) dir. Max Carlo Kohal*
Trains (Pol-Lith) dir. Maciej J. Drygas
Ice Aged (Ger) dir. Alexandra Sell
Ms. President (Slovakia) dir. Marek Sulik
* - world premiere
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