Miroslav Mogorovic, the president of the Critics’ Picks jury at the recently concluded Tallinn Black Nights (PÖFF), details his approach to his job and how he thinks the festival has evolved over the years in terms of its role in promoting emerging filmmakers.

Cineuropa: How do you approach leading a jury composed of professionals from diverse backgrounds and experiences? Do you strive for consensus, or do you value the diversity of opinions as part of the selection process?
Miroslav Mogorovic: Firstly, I was honoured to be part of the Critics’ Picks jury at Tallinn, and am grateful to festival director Tiina Lokk and curator Nikolaj Nikitin [see the interview] for inviting me. This year’s jury was composed of two producers – Elisa Fernanda Pirir (Guatemala/Norway) and myself – and one director, who is also his own producer now, Gust Van den Berghe (Belgium). As such, I want to point out the very positive angle: we, as highly experienced filmmakers, are judging a selection called Critics’ Picks. Usually, it is the other way around.

As for the voting procedure, we managed to reward all films through unanimous decision-making, which was highly satisfying, as with such a wonderful, rich and diverse selection, it was great to see that my colleagues and I were on the same artistic wavelength.

Over the years, how have you seen the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival evolve in terms of its role in promoting emerging filmmakers? What stands out about the festival’s contribution to the global film landscape?
More than a decade ago, I visited Tallinn for the Baltic Event – the industry strand of the festival – as I was running B2B at Belgrade FEST at the time, and we were partnered back then. That was my first point of contact with the festival, but at that time, I was rather focused on the industry aspects. After almost ten years, I came back, and I was pleasantly surprised by its eclectic selections and representation of world film industries, including emerging ones like Bhutan, Ecuador and so on.

Bearing in mind the international festival landscape, I think the role and importance of PÖFF will only increase at upcoming editions. Alongside producing, I have also been running the Palic European Film Festival for the last 30 years, so knowing the festival’s budgetary limitations, I was really impressed by its capacity to attract and present such a rich palette of movies and artists, who come to Tallinn from all over the world. I hope the festival budget will grow in the future, as they really deserve it.

When evaluating films for awards, what qualities do you prioritise? Is it more about the storytelling, technical innovation, cultural impact or a delicate balance of all of these elements?
The wide variety of different cinematographic and cultural approaches, while still being connected through certain topics and styles – there was a clear through line of a playful genre approach. Bearing this in mind, of course, the only thing we could evaluate was the balance you mentioned, and funnily enough, I would like to underline that - in line with your question - our winner, The Brothers Kitaura, was the awarded festival film for the best storytelling, the Best Director Award went to Dechen Roder (I, the Song [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Dechen Roder
scheda film]) for the cultural impact of her movie, and the Special Mention we gave to Fishgirl [rewarded its] technical innovation, [which is important] for the development of cinematography in a country like Ecuador.

This year’s festival featured a wide range of emerging filmmakers. What do you believe are the essential qualities that new directors need to have in order to make a lasting impact on today’s film industry?
As a producer with 20 years’ experience and with a track record of more than 40 international fiction films and co-productions, this question is really important to me – not only in the context of PÖFF, but also European cinema in general. It is important for the role of European cinema to be setting trends and creating new waves, and not just following them. The benefits of public financing in Europe are so huge compared to the possibilities for filmmakers from Latin America, for instance, that at least the moral obligations of the auteurs should be greater than only making coming-of-age films about themselves! The complexity of the present political and social situation in Europe, and the world, deserves greater engagement by European auteurs – they need to take off their cosy slippers, step into the real world and tell us something about it. That used to be the important cultural role of cinema, and we need to revive it in order to keep cinema as important and as meaningful as it used to be.