TALLINN, ESTONIA — Has Estonia’s Tallinn Film Festival ever been this great? Since festival director Tina Locke launched the event in 1997, it has emerged as one of the fastest growing film events in Northern Europe and has been recognized since 2014 for achieving A-List general category status, shared with the likes of Cannes, Berlin and Venice.
The festival continues its strong run in 2025, driven by a strong Catalan focus, the discovery of new talent and a vibrant industry sector. The question is whether this will create headwinds for the enterprising Baltic countries’ local film industries. Here are six takeaways from this year’s Fest edition.
Hollywood Glamor at Discovery Campus
As evidence of Tallinn’s ace reputation as a training ground for the next generation of film professionals from around the world, its star educational program, Discovery Campus, includes Hollywood costume designer Debra McGuire (Friends, This year, we’ve brought together world-class leaders, from hairstylist Nina Paskowitz (Pirates of the Caribbean, Mob City) to Emmy Award-winning composer Miriam Cutler. (“Love, Gilda”, “RBG”) and the famous Austrian helmer Jessica Hausner. More than 40 up-and-coming talents were divided into Script Pool, Black Night Stars, Music Meets Film, Black Room, and Frame in a Frame workshops for four days of inspiration and training. “All we[as costume designers]want is to be inside the actors and directors’ heads and see what they see, so communication is key. If we get the bible early on[from the producers]we know what to do and where to go. If there’s a problem, we need to find a solution together,” were some of McGuire’s tips. Meanwhile, Hausner and her husband, composer Marcus Binder, shared their creative collaboration from concept to final mix, using Club Zero as a case study. “We want our talented people to learn from the mistakes their leaders make so they don’t make them themselves,” said Torin Tranberg, Director of Discovery Campus.
Estonia funds new studio, increases coins for overseas shoots
The tech-driven country where Skype was born is turning dreams of seducing other “Tenet” tent poles into reality. The state-of-the-art Aida Ville Studio in northeastern Estonia is scheduled to open in July 2026 as the largest studio complex in Northern Europe. Speaking at the panel “Step in the Wild, Wild East – Where Creativity Meets Courage”, the studio’s director, Tito Kusmic of the Aida Vill Investment Agency, said the €16 million ($18.6 million) complex is new and a “unique concept”. A film ecosystem that combines studio infrastructure, local production expertise, multimedia accelerators, and next-generation film technology solutions for producers with access to regional (40%) and national (30%) cash rebates. One of the latest international films to be backed by Estonia’s attractive cash rebates, the Finnish-American action film Road to Revenge (released in the US on November 21 by Sony Picture Releasing) was shot almost entirely in Estonia. In another panel, First Advertising’s Hanna Hedengren, Estonian line producer Johanna Truss (all film) and film commissioner Nele Paves explained how the production was done, using 105 local crew members over an intensive 44-day shoot, in addition to complex SFX.
Other good news for overseas shoots. Next year, Film Estonia’s annual budget of 6 million euros ($6.9 million) will increase to 10 million euros ($11.5 million).
Catalunya: Punching power that far exceeds its weight
At Friday night’s ceremony, Catalonia won four awards, including the Grand Prix at the Tallinn Black Nights Festival for Julia de Pax Sorvas’ main competition piece, “The Good Daughter.” A film that heralds another potential major voice in Catalan cinema: The Good Daughter, co-writer of the drama series Cuellar, which won this year’s top prize at Series Mania, Europe’s largest television festival. Ena Hija’) encapsulates much of what has made the world so excited about so many Catalan films over the past decade: about mostly new female screenwriters and directors, down-to-earth cinema, and social and psychological realism. A universal problem.
Leading actress Chiara Arancibia won the Best Actress award for her sympathetic performance. The film also won Taryn’s coveted Audience Award. Starring Barcelona’s up-and-coming production company Astra Pictures, with support across the value chain from the Catalan government, The Good Daughter was also produced with Madrid’s Avalon and Belgium’s Kratel Films, as Catalonia emerges as a pan-regional and international co-production force in Europe and Latin America. Another Catalan title, Leo and Lou, directed by Carlos Solano, won the Tallinn Children’s Jury Award for Best Film. There is a wider range of talent in Catalonia.
Survival tips for producers
As highlighted by Tallinn Industry Director Marge Rieske, one of the overarching themes of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event (I@T&BE) was how to finance stories amid rising costs and shrinking public funding. “We have been looking at ways to alleviate this problem through the smart use of AI, cash rebates, post-production with ApostLab presentations, new technology solutions provided by the IDA Hub Film and Multimedia Innovation Center, and private investment, among others,” she said.
In the panel ‘Private Finance in Film: Between Promise and Fantasy’, venture capital funders Jesús Martínez (Moby Dick, Spain), Alexandra Lebret (Together Fund, France), Patrick Fischer (Creativity Capital, UK) and Laine Lannes (Talifornia Film Fund, Estonia) shared some tips for producers.
*Attract US creative partners and convert A-list-driven content into Euro-US co-pros to take advantage of rich local tax incentives, soft finance, and talented, cheap labor.
“It’s a good time to bring American films to Europe,” said Lebret, who has a 50 million euro ($57.5 million) fund invested in independent producers. “They have talent.” “We turned two American movies with big stars into Spanish co-productions,” said Martinez, who specializes in A-list talent-driven commercial productions.
*Protect your assets – your IP. This is what we are betting on,” said Martinez and Fisher, whose VC funds invest directly in IP.
* Sharing rights and building strong alliances with co-production partners, LeBrette suggested.
*Consider building a vertical structure and be innovative with your business model, advised Fisher.
Lebret said to diversify revenue streams by building on multiple content legs, including narrative verticals, whatever the genre or format, while Fisher advised looking at the creator economy as well.
Baltic film boom threatened by cultural rupture
At PÖFF, Estonia confirmed its strength, especially in documentary filmmaking (‘The Edge of the Night’, ‘My Family and the Other Clowns’) and bold new voices like Eeva Maj, whose Mo movement is Estonian’s answer to Dogma 95. After the successful world premiere in Karlovy Vary, Lithuanians received new awards, dominating the awards list with “The Visitor”, “Renovation”, “China Sea” and “Holy Destructors”. (in the first two films), San Sebastian and IDFA respectively. Latvia, on the other hand, continues to shine in the animation world with Dogs of God, a double nominee at the European Film Awards and Latvia’s second Oscar nominee after last year’s phenomenal winner Flow, albeit in a completely different genre.
But the Ukraine war, which is impacting cultural budgets across Europe, could have a dramatic impact on the small Baltic nation. While the Lithuanian Film Institute is still waiting for the 2026 budget to be passed by parliament, EFI CEO Edith Sepp has warned that a 4% reduction in the Estonian Film Institute’s core operating costs will “directly affect our ability to release Estonian films around the world.” The institute’s headquarters also lamented that the freeze on domestic films will remain at €7 million ($8.1 million) to $8 million ($9.2 million), while cash rebates for overseas shoots will increase from €6 million ($6.9 million) to €10 million ($11.5 million). “This is a historic change,” she said. “Estonia has always prided itself on giving priority to its own authors, but that is no longer the case. This is really sad because we are prioritizing foreign works over the survival of our own culture. We have reached a stage where we are allowed to prioritize economy over culture, and that is a really dangerous choice for any small country,” she said.
Poff deals
Festival film sales and pick-ups reported by Variety:
*The Lithuanian “The Activist” by Romas Zabalauskas was distributed by Alief to approximately 20 territories, including TLA release for North America, the Baltics via WBD International Content LLC for HBO Max, and Optimale in French-speaking regions.
*French-Nepali documentary “18 Hopes for Paradise” by Joan Nuno Pinto shot by Alpha Violet
*Norwegian “No Comment” by Petter Ness, provided by TrustNordisk
*Spain’s Cristian Bernard’s “Under Your Feet” was featured in FilmSharks.
*Denmark’s “Pretty Young Love” was sold by LevelK to Germany (Splendid Film), Encripta (Latin America) and South Korea (Husky Films).
*Lithuania’s “Hunger Breakfast Strike” by Karolis Kaupinis, on which Arif was on board.
*Tine Klint, Head of LevelK, who has not attended PÖFF for some time, commented on Tallinn and said: “We will prioritize this event from now on, as it is packed with industry programs and has the potential for cross-regional networking. We always submit films because this is a festival that helps us raise our profile and is a great festival where filmmakers can experience their premieres with a great audience.”
TrustNordisk’s Nikolai Korsgaard, who was responsible for No Comment and My First Love in the Official Film Competition and First Film Competition respectively, said both titles were already benefiting from the festival buzz. But due to a tough market, he went home empty-handed. “2025 has been an unprecedentedly challenging year, so we are more cautious than ever in choosing the right projects that are marketable and reliable,” he said.
John Hopewell contributed to this article.
