14/11/2018 - Andrea Pallaoro will preside over the Official Selection jury, and the line-ups also include Blerta Zeqiri, Mike van Diem, João Pedro Rodrigues, Timo Salminen and Pelin Esmer

Director Andrea Pallaoro, who will chair the Official Selection jury

The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (16 November-2 December) has announced the line-ups of seven juries for films screening in the gathering’s five competition programmes. The prizewinners will be announced at the festival’s awards ceremony, which takes place on 1 December.

The Official Selection jury will have five members, headed up by Italian-US director-scriptwriter Andrea Pallaoro (Hannah [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]). He will be joined by Lithuanian composer Martynas Bialobžeskis, who won the Best Music Award for The Manslayer / The Virgin / The Shadow [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rea Lest
film profile] at last year’s Black Nights; Finnish cinematographer Timo Salminen, who has shot all of Aki Kaurismäki’s films; Icelandic writer-director Guðrún Ragnarsdóttir, whose first feature, Summer Children [+see also:
trailer
film profile], was shown in the First Feature Competition of Black Nights in 2017; and Belgian actor-writer-producer Gilles De Schryver, who produced Cargo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gilles Coulier
film profile], which was screened at Black Nights in 2017.

The jury of the First Feature Competition is chaired by Dutch director Mike van Diem, who won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-language Film in 1998 with Character, and whose Tulipani: Love, Honour and a Bicycle [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] received the Audience Award at Black Nights last year. The other members of the jury are Kosovar filmmaker Blerta Zeqiri, whose debut, The Marriage [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Blerta Zeqiri
film profile], won the Special Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award in the First Feature Competition last year; Ukrainian producer Igor Savychenko, whose The Gateway [+see also:
trailer
film profile] screened in the Official Selection of Black Nights last year; Portuguese director and artist João Pedro Rodrigues, whose The Ornithologist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Pedro Rodrigues
film profile] got an airing at Black Nights in 2016; and Estonian actress Karin Rask, who has starred in several popular Estonian TV series and box-office hits, such as The Class Reunion (2016) and The Secret Society of Souptown [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2015).

The jury of the Baltic Competition programme will be presided over by US director-screenwriter-cinematographer Steven Bernstein, whose film Dominion earned Rhys Ifans the Best Actor Award in Black Nights’ Official Selection in 2016. He will be joined by Turkish filmmaker Pelin Esmer, who won the Best Script Award at Tallinn last year for Something Useful [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pelin Esmer
film profile]; and award-winning Russian film and theatre critic Sergey Sholokhov.

The festival’s other juries are as follows:

FIPRESCI Jury (evaluates the films in the First Feature Competition programme)

Alexandra Pütter (Germany)
Sunčica Unevska (Macedonia)
Annika Koppel (Estonia)

Jury for the Rebels With a Cause competition programme

Andrei Liimets (Estonia), film and culture critic, civic activist
Joonas Kiik (Estonia), film critic
Tõnu Karjatse (Estonia), film critic and culture journalist

Ecumenical Jury

Rainer Sarnet (Estonia), stage and film director (November [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rea Lest
film profile])
Regina Hansen (Estonia), public relations specialist at the Consistory of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Erki Tamm (Estonia), reverend, president of the Union of Free Evangelical and Baptist Churches of Estonia
Madis Kolk (Estonia), editor-in-chief of the culture magazine Theatre. Music. Cinema
Marge-Marie Paas (Estonia), public relations specialist, Roman Catholic Church in Estonia

NETPAC Jury

Wong Tuck Cheong (Malaysia), editor, honorary secretary of NETPAC
Olga Khlasheva (Kazakhstan), film critic and producer (Owners, The Gentle Indifference of the World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adilkhan Yerzhanov
film profile])
Maarja Hindoalla (Estonia), film critic, radio show editor, curator of the Film Archives of the National Archives of Estonia