As its 21st edition comes to a close, the question arises: has the Haapsalu Horror and Fantasy Film Festival delivered the scares once again? Festival director Helmut Jänes – whose commitment to the Walpurgis Night Race ended in injury – shares his takes.

Cineuropa: It was nice to see you at the closing ceremony following the accident. What is the Walpurgis Night Race, in which you participated, and why is it important?
Helmut Jänes: HÕFF has several traditions, and this parade held right before the opening ceremony is one of them. This year, we collaborated with a local Haapsalu sports club, which organised a run on Walpurgis Night that the festival co-hosted. I’m happy that the run brought together many participants, including those dressed up in costumes and general sports enthusiasts. Our festival team also entered the relay race. Unfortunately, I injured my leg so badly that it had to be put in a cast. In the grand scheme of things, it was a blessing in disguise. Rather than dampening my spirits, it taught me an important lesson: when it comes to sports, common sense is key.

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Aldo Tammsaar was celebrated this year - why did you want to award a stuntman? It’s such an underappreciated profession.
Stunt performers are, in a sense, the invisible soldiers of cinema. While every film lover has seen movies featuring their work, few recognise their faces and even fewer know their names. It’s surprising how many Estonian stunt performers have actually participated in international projects: a recent example that comes to mind is the Finnish action film Sisu 2.

This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award laureate, Aldo Tammsaar, is a true legend. Between 1978 and 1994, Tammsaar – the first Estonian to work as a professional stuntman – was one of the best stunt masters in the Soviet Union. He was part of an elite six-person stunt team that worked on all of the most significant adventure films and thrillers of that era. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he also built a career in Finland. The pinnacle of this period was Pekka Parikka’s grand war epic The Winter War.

In addition to his physical feats, Tammsaar founded Estonia’s first horror film mini-festival. Thanks to his efforts, films that had previously been banned at the Helsinki Love & Anarchy Film Festival were shown at Tallinn’s Eha Cinema on 27 September 1993. These included Jörg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik 1–2 and Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer. A small delegation of filmmakers, including Buttgereit and John Woo, travelled to Tallinn for the occasion. Overall, the award – called the Haapsalu Shawl – certainly went to the right man.

Can you tell us more about this year’s festival trailer? What did you want to celebrate this time?
It’s inspired by vintage films and series like Twin Peaks. During HÕFF, Haapsalu itself transforms into a Twin Peaks-esque small town where strange things start to happen. The detective you saw in the trailer is a familiar face to the HÕFF audience: he's amateur director and actor Toomas Aria, who has showcased his Justice trilogy at the festival over the years. Ultimately, the trailer was a hit because it offered plenty of references to both the people of Haapsalu and the festival audience.

What about the live events, from the chat with the real-life witch to students who got the chance to showcase their own robots? What do they add to the festival?
A festival should be more than just an event for watching films. HÕFF is still a small event, and we have to evaluate what we can and cannot do, given our resources, but one thing is certain: we must keep the local community, and especially the youth, in mind when planning our events. One example of this is our collaboration with the local Haapsalu tech club, INNOKAS, where young people build robots and show them to the festival audience.

Similarly, for the second year in a row, we organised workshops specifically for young people, teaching them how films are made. While last year the focus was on film sound design, this year, we took a more specific approach, demonstrating how foley effects are created.

There was a sentence that was repeated many times this year: horror films can be violent or funny, but they are not that scary any more. Do you agree with that?
I’ve often wondered why horror films aren’t as scary as they used to be, but I haven’t found a good answer. Even at this year’s festival, some people said the movies could be scarier, while others said there hasn’t been such a high number of scary movies in a long time. I believe we struck a better balance this year between more terrifying films and those that are perhaps less so.

Whether something is scary or not is a subjective opinion that depends on several factors, including age and film-watching experience. Even after screenings of Hokum, Dolly, Meat Kills or Incomplete Chairs, one could hear whispers that these were “hilarious”. Well, I suppose they were for some people – and that’s not a problem.