The most interesting book is generally still that somewhat mysterious work that we haven't yet read – its is possible it will remain on the shelf forever, without its time ever coming – but it always allows us to vividly imagine what surprises those pages might conceal.

The same can be said of films, the only difference being that our domestic film distribution is unfortunately predictable and transparent enough that no great mental labyrinths emerge from it, with the occasional odd exception.

Fortunately, the Black Nights Film Festival offers that feeling in abundance, every November.

The Nordic autumn can be quite colorless once the leaves have fallen. The season of gloom hadn't even really started yet, though I was already tired, as a local pop song said some time ago.

Vitamin D deficiency, a soggy decay, and countless shades of brownish-gray: Reality doesn't offer people much of a leg-up at this time of year.

So it's no wonder that colorful Christmas decorations and decorated trees start to appear in stores as early as the last weeks of October; like those unread books, this represents a chance to believe that soon everything will be lighter and more pleasant again.

And isn't the two-and-a-half-week-long PÖFF also a type of cultural lantern, one which helps carry us through the primeval darkness of the half-year?

Down the years, I have had countless experiences at PÖFF which still buoy me, yet to feel the deeper value of this festival, you don't even need to go to the cinema.
The root cause of why this film celebration is so eagerly anticipated both by me and hundreds of others lies in the palette of opportunities it offers us.

Whether we seize that opportunity is up to all of us, but even an unused opportunity can provide some satisfaction; what matters more is knowing that for most of November we can enter cinemas, and there windows open into places we'll never visit, people we'll never meet, and stories that would otherwise remain secret.

Even if you watch dozens of movies during those two and a half weeks, the most delightful thing in the evening after a long day at the cinema is still to conceive of what actually went unseen.

In this time when direct flights from Tallinn airport are drying up at an alarming rate, it is somehow boundlessly joyous to know that PÖFF opens the world to us for a while at a quite affordable rate, and instead of having to settle for a lack of choice, everything is, on the contrary, even annoyingly and exhaustingly plentiful.

But you shouldn't let that fact cause stress; instead, take it as a type of challenge.
I believe that more than a few people will find themselves unable to find that one perfect film to go see from the program, but that is no great disaster, as even they will at least be left with an image or dream of that which remains unseen.

Maybe somewhere in there was my new favorite film, after all?

This question keeps calling us to search and discover, to go back to the cinema again, often to be disappointed, but always believing that somewhere the right film does exist.

It is hard to imagine what fall reality would be like without PÖFF, and I feel for all the other Nordic countries that must push through this time without such a supporting shoulder.

So let us at least make the most of it and dream, through this gloom, of all those films that in the end still remain unseen.

This year's PÖFF festival runs Friday, November 7 to Sunday, November 23. The official event page in English is here.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and X and never miss an update!