The 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, known as PÖFF, kicks off on November 6, and its programmers have packed the schedule with films that sound strange even by festival standards. Titles from the Baltics, Europe, Asia and beyond will screen in the Estonian capital, and several of them look built to start arguments.

The programming team has a habit of picking work that refuses the mainstream and the comfortable. This year’s list leans hard into family rot, bodily horror, and documentaries that open old wounds on camera.

A castle dinner with a body count of secrets

The biggest name on the offbeat list is Sinless, the world premiere from Hungarian director Attila Hartung. He made his feature debut, FOMO, which premiered at Tallinn in 2019. This time he returns in the Official Competition with a psychological thriller he co-wrote with horror novelist Attila Veres.

The synopsis opens calmly. Henrik, played by Márk Nagy, arrives at the Szentiványi family’s castle for a celebratory dinner. Wine is poured, and Hungary’s powerful construction dynasty welcomes him into its ordered world. Then the temperature drops. Only Anita, played by Anna Mészöly, his girlfriend and the family’s youngest daughter, seems to know why he is really there.

The family has moved through the highest political and economic circles for generations, and the synopsis says it has left crimes and unspoken debts behind. As the evening goes on, casual remarks sharpen and silences stretch. The film asks a simple question with a nasty edge: is Henrik the hunter, or the hunted?

The line that will probably stick with viewers comes from the synopsis itself:

“At this table, innocence may be the most carefully rehearsed role of all.”

Hornets, a three-hour runtime and a mother who will not leave

If Sinless is a slow poison, The Two Hornets is a full-body shock. Slovakian director Dominik György makes his feature debut here as a solo director, and the PÖFF website calls it a “daring queer story” and a “diverse, vibrant, chic, and quirky love and revenge thriller.” The festival also suggests György was influenced by Xavier Dolan, whose film Mommy was shot in the same 1:1 square format used here.

The premise is blunt. Samo, a gay man facing an unplanned pregnancy with a woman overseas, returns to a remote forest cabin to reunite with his narcissistic mother. They are there to confront a toxic past. Meanwhile, Samo is caught in a drug-fueled affair with his former childhood bully, and he has to decide whether to embrace fatherhood or break what the synopsis calls an inherited family sin.

Then comes the detail that will make people either lean in or walk out. The movie runs 3 hours and 8 minutes. In Samo’s warped reality, omnipresent hornets gain an evil power and push him toward a showdown with his mother that could turn brutal.

György is also doing the work of a one-man studio. He wrote, directed, produced, handled cinematography and editing, and took the music credit as well.

Nigerian teens, a crate of gear and a crocodile

PÖFF’s Youth and Children’s Film Festival has its own oddball pick. Crocodile is a documentary about young Nigerians whose amateur sci-fi films, made with phones, self-built sets and a lot of imagination, caught the attention of J.J. Abrams. The festival website says Abrams acknowledged their “brilliant, inventive” work and got Bad Robot’s Kate Webster to send the team a crate of professional filmmaking gear, including cameras and laptops.

The Critics, the collective behind the films, is based in Kaduna, Nigeria, and is made up of friends and family members who have been making movies since childhood. Power outages and everyday struggles still interrupt their work. The festival notes that as their films reached an international audience, the group faced new opportunities along with the responsibilities that come with them.

New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly worked with the team on the project. The film premiered at Berlin and now brings its do-it-yourself spirit to Tallinn.

A daughter, a camera and a father who never stopped looking

The most personal pick may be Love Exposed, a documentary getting its world premiere in the PÖFF International Competition. The logline is hard to forget: “He’s spent a lifetime photographing naked women. Now his daughter wants him to reveal himself.”

Blanka, a successful film editor, confronts her father, Vlastimil Kula, about his career as an “erotic photographer.” The festival synopsis says the film explores her childhood, her father’s provocative legacy and decades of buried family history. It describes a world that is “eccentric, hilarious, uncomfortable and deeply touching, sometimes all at the same time.”

Filmed over four years, the documentary uses an intimate, observational approach. The PÖFF website says it captures brutally frank conversations, moments of vulnerability and unexpected tenderness. Kula, the festival notes, is a man more comfortable with nudity than with emotional openness.

The film comes from Czech documentary maker Filip Remunda, whose earlier works include Czech Dream, which explored consumerism and media manipulation, and Happiness to All, about a Russian vlogger and cold-water swimming record holder who is slowly changing his mind about Putin’s Russia.

A sci-fi cube, a Lithuanian professor and a green door

The Baltic Film Competition includes Dice-Ching-O-Mat, which the director, Kristijonas Vildziunas, sells with a bold pitch: Yasujirō Ozu meets Christopher Nolan, and the ancient Chinese Book of Changes meets retro sci-fi, with Lithuanian flavor added.

Dainius Gavenonis stars as Vilis, a 55-year-old professor of Asian studies. He has spent so much of his life on work that he has grown distant from his wife and three children, and he has even forgotten their health problems. Then he wakes up inside an elevator-like cube with an old TV set, a mysterious intercom and riddles, including “Who are you?”

To move forward, he has to roll dice for a chance to revisit moments from the life he was too busy to notice. He also has to find the green door before time runs out. The film premiered at the Warsaw International Film Festival, and it is Vildziunas’ sixth feature.

Dominican gut cures and a nanny who makes the girl smile

Few titles in the lineup sound as blunt as Sh*t Happens, a dark comedy from Dominican director José María Cabral making its world premiere in the Official Competition. The logline says it all: “When science fails, trust your gut. Just don’t ask what the ‘miracle cure’ is made of.”

Cabral has had three films submitted for the Best International Feature Film Oscar race: The Projectionist, Woodpeckers and the thriller Checkmate. This one, the synopsis says, follows a wealthy Dominican household. Verónica, played by Lizbeth Santos, controls every bite her sickly daughter Isabella eats. Raúl, played by Fele Martínez, is a frustrated biotechnologist experimenting with homemade cures. Abi, played by Cindy Galán, is the young nanny who can still make the girl smile.

Raúl then develops a microbiotic treatment with a secret ingredient, and the results are startling. Isabella’s gut stabilizes and her strength returns. Soon, the household’s other illnesses begin to clear up too. Word spreads, and a remedy nobody can quite explain becomes the thing everyone wants. Then the miracle takes an unexpected turn.

Finland’s first drag show and a murder that was never forgotten

The documentary Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag comes from Finnish filmmaker Vesa Kuosmanen, whose earlier doc Just Animals screened at Tallinn in 2023. This one is in the PÖFF International Competition and focuses on the cultural memory of a community.

In the late 1970s, a retired archivist named Jolanda stood on stage with his friend Mummo in Finland’s first drag show, Happy Gays. The show drew big audiences and a lot of attention. Mummo was one of the first openly gay men in Finland. Then the AIDS crisis hit, bringing fear and violence. In 1988, Mummo was killed in his home.

More than 30 years later, Jolanda opens his own archive and invites a new generation of drag artists to bring Happy Gays back to the stage. The re-enactments stir up painful memories, along with a humorous and inappropriate side of Jolanda. The film mixes 1980s archive footage, staged reconstructions and rehearsal footage of young performers for whom drag is more self-expression than protest.

The festival says the film reminds viewers that Pride began partly out of fear, and that one small show was once a tiny step toward resistance and freedom.

A mystery package, two detectives and a Christmas deadline

PÖFF also has a holiday pick with a puzzle at its center. The Mystery Package comes from Norwegian filmmaker Silje Evensno Jacobsen, who appears in the documentary herself. The premise: for the past 20 years, the family has received strange presents every Christmas from an anonymous sender.

Nine-year-old Edle and six-year-old Brage have spent their whole lives trying to solve it. Their filmmaker mother and close relatives are all suspects, and the children become fearless detectives. The festival says they check every bit of ink-stained handwriting, question every suspicious person, watch post office security footage and leave no snowball unturned.

The question the film leaves hanging is simple: will the anonymous benefactor be found before Christmas is over?