Tallinn's Film Market Turns 25 With a Record 900 Registered Professionals

Industry @ Tallinn & Baltic Event is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and it has drawn a record 900 accredited professionals from 54 countries, according to Variety. Accredited means registered and badged to attend. The market runs alongside the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which is holding its 30th edition.

The market is a working marketplace rather than a red-carpet event. Film and TV people meet to pitch projects, find money and partners, and sell finished work. Around 100 sales agents, distributors and festival programmers have signed up, according to the same report. Sales agents sell films to cinemas and TV channels in other countries, and programmers pick what appears on festival screens.

This year's line-up includes 71 projects, among them 44 films and 21 series. More than 100 panels cover audience design, sales and distribution. Audience design is the work of deciding who a film or series is for and how to reach them. Friday 20 November is given over entirely to sales, distribution and audience design.

The market's head is Marge Liiske. She joined the Baltic Event Co-Production Market in 2013, after seven years at the Estonian Film Foundation, and took over the whole Industry @ Tallinn & Baltic Event platform in 2016, according to Variety. Black Nights received A-category status in 2014, a ranking that marks it as an internationally recognised festival.

The market has grown beyond films. Series programming began in 2017 with the world premiere of Babylon Berlin and developed into TV Beats. A short film industry programme launched in 2021. Children's and youth film got its own industry days in 2023 and its own category in the Co-Production Market in 2024. Discovery Campus, which brings together seven talent programmes, sits under the same roof.

This year's focus countries are the Baltics. The market counts 310 Baltic professionals, 81 films, 21 projects and 19 Discovery Campus talents among its participants. A Baltic showcase is set for 19 November. A Spotlight on Basque Audiovisual brings a delegation of 10 professionals from the Basque Country in Spain.

The festival side has its own threads. Organisers at PÖFF, the festival's Estonian name, say the event has been based at Telliskivi Loomelinnak since 2009. They have also teamed up with the designer Reet Aus and Comdecor to turn old festival banners into bags, now on sale in the PÖFF webshop, and a new wolf T-shirt is open for pre-order. A free design workshop and a creative meeting with the actor Tim Blake Nelson are on the public programme. Jarmo Reha received the Bruno O'Ya young film actor scholarship. Priit Pärn, Sven Grünberg and Hilmar Oddsson are the lifetime achievement laureates of the 30th festival, PÖFF says.

For anyone curious about how films reach a cinema or a streaming service, the market is one of the places where that starts. Deals struck in rooms like these can take years to appear on screen.