Susanne Gottlieb from DMovies.org interviews Marge Liiske, the woman at the helm of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, one of the largest, most exciting and fastest-growing such events of Northern Europe; they discuss “democratic networking”, cooperating with the European commission, supporting regional filmmakers, the joys and the pitfalls of AI, and… why we should throw film professional into the ice-cold Baltic sea!!!
The film industry is constantly changing. Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, or ITBE, the industry event happening parallel to the Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn for the past 22 years, has seen its share of changing markets, demands, filmmakers, and communication tools. One constant for the past 11 years is Marge Liiske. Before taking the reins of the Industry Event in 2013, Liiske was the managing director of the Estonian Film Foundation for seven years, and a manager at Media Desk Estonia for four years. She also worked as production manager. To boot, Liiske is the supervisory board of the Estonian Film Institute, and a member of the European Film Academy.
The Event has experienced significant growth since its inception. The number of participants soared from 370 in 2015 to more than 800 last year. Similarly with the size of the catalogue, which now boasts in excess than 170 pages (up from 115 in 2015). At present, they have 63 projects (44 films and 19 series).
At Industry@Tallinn she and her team offer cutting-edge insights into the fast-shifting demands of pitching, producing and promoting films of all genres, combined with an intimate, levelled space for participant interaction year after year. An honour, as she calls it. Today, Industry@Tallinn isn’t just a player within the Baltic and Nordic film community. It attracts people from all over the world.
Susanne Gottlieb – What sparked the creation of the Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, and how did it reach its current format and dimension?
Marge Liiske – The festival PÖFF was established in 1997, the industry followed in 2002. The founder Riina Sildos was the head of the Estonian Film Fund, and she saw a need to present Baltic projects and films to the rest of the world. The first showcase of Baltic films started in 2002, the Co-Production Market followed in 2005, as well as other parts of the programme. It also moved away from Baltics only, but it’s still in our DNA to support the local and regional filmmakers, by bringing them, the co-production partners and buyers to Tallinn, so they can present their projects.
This kind of care is the thinking behind everything we do. Producers are not the richest people in the world. Screenwriters and directors cannot travel the whole year either. There are only a couple of events they go to. This middle-sized marketplace is the perfect opportunity for them to meet the people who might be too busy in the big markets at other festivals.
We’ve also been gradually adding different programmes. Last year we had 800 people from 54 countries. The Black Nights Film Festival has evolved from a regional festival into the vibrant A-class film festival and is welcoming more and more filmmakers from around the world. It creates a very natural mix of industry and festival. Today the filmmakers are at the industry with their project. Two or three years later they come with their films to the festival. There is an organic synergy between the market and the festival. We are growing together.
SG – You mentioned the advantage of mid-sized festivals. Do producers simply pay less attention to up-and-coming young filmmakers at bigger festivals because they are competing with established talent?
ML – There are festivals like Berlin and Cannes, where sales and distributors don’t have much time to look at new projects or meet the filmmakers. Maybe they don’t have a project at that time, but meeting them, and understanding that they think alike and might be working on the next project within two or three years is important.
It is overwhelming to understand where to start. Also in Berlin, people are rushing around. If you don’t know anybody, it’s quite challenging. It’s frightening. In Tallinn, we are still human-sized. People come and go. On our busiest days, we have about 500 film people in town and you can approach them because they are here. They are at the hotel, they are in the conference rooms, and they are eating lunch together. We are a networking event. So it is a little bit easier to do that in smaller places. Even if you don’t have the knowledge or courage to arrange a meeting, you bump into the people. We don’t have any barriers, everybody is democratically invited to all the events.
SG – What else distinguishes Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event?
ML – Besides the human scale and the programmes we are organising, it’s mixing different people with different backgrounds and specialities, like at the Discovery Campus. It’s a training programme for cinematographers, set designers, costume designers, film music composers or producers. It is probably unique to offer different backgrounds and different professions in the industry a space where they can mix and mingle and learn from each other.
Children’s and Youth Film is another element. Many industry events in Europe are specifically dedicated to children’s films. We try to mix children’s and youth film industry people with the grown-ups. It helps to find inspiration. It’s also important to bear in mind that the young generation we are making films for now will grow up very soon. The projects we are nurturing now will be seen by them when they are adults. Understanding how they think, and what values they have is important because they are your future viewers. That’s why we mix the panels for the children, youth and the grown-ups. Or take the development of genre films for example. For ten years, we organise the only European training program for genre films – European Genre Forum-, together with Amsterdam Imagine and Zagreb Fantastic Film Fest. During the last Lab in Tallinn, the projects get pitched and can have meetings with our guests.
SG – You’ve been with the Event for 11 years now. How has the market for Baltic and Nordic films changed during this period?
ML – We still have the honour of presenting them. Nothing is a given. You have to earn it. I think this is something that drives us. Films are universal. Estonian audiences may want to see local content because it’s local, but they are compared every day with the rest of the world. What we see every day is the world competition. We cannot lower the bar because it’s regional. They have to be as good as the others.
SG – What is your conversion rate? In other words, how many projects [films and series] come to fruition?
ML – It is roughly 70% – but it also takes into account the projects that have been pitched lately, so they are still in development. We also have a couple of cases when projects were pitched in 2005 and 2007 at the co-production market and we all thought for years they were not going into production – but then, they screened in 2023 and 2022 respectively. So in one case it took 18 years and the other 15 years before being completed and screened. One of them changed production teams, but in the end the film was screened in Cannes! It always amazes me how persistent some dreams can be.
We are proud of our ongoing cooperation with the European Commission. They trust us as the platform to promote innovation and audiovisual policymaking. The European Film Forum is now only in two places. One is the European Forum in Cannes and the other is the Innovation Forum in Tallinn. That shows a little bit of curiosity. We understand that the world is changing. We constantly have to observe what’s happening on the innovation side.
SG – You said in your opening words in last year’s catalogue that film is not in a crisis, it’s just a different landscape. How do you keep ahead of the curve?
ML – The crisis is yet to come, yes. The landscape shifts quite a lot. Our thinking follows it, just a little bit slower. We understand that change is coming, but what are the next steps to take? What are the cornerstones and how could they be tackled via our programmes. Right now we are looking into the distribution landscape. What’s happening, what is selling, what is not, what is hot, what is not. We have input from the people on the battlefield, the sales agents and distributors.
The world is heavily affected by budget cuts. European filmmakers are mostly financed by public funds. So we invite the heads of some of these funds, and they talk about these changes. We also bring in the young people, who might think differently, and who might have different answers. Hence the new programmes for producers, for the Tallinn Industry Academy. Let’s involve the next generation in our programmes.
SG – You just launched the AI Atelier. Certain companies help distributors to analyse audience behaviour and preferences. Is this the future of AI? And what is the aim of the Atelier?
ML – The question is, how AI as a tool can help us. We want to make it a normality. It’s here. We must take the fear out of it. We have been talking about AI for a couple of years. When it first appeared, it was kind of a buzzword. Last year one of the most successful workshops was about how to use AI in marketing. We had a workshop about how to use AI as your staff writer. Writing can be a lonely job, you need somebody to talk to for feedback. People may not be using AI in every possible way because we seldom use all of our technology at the fullest.
SG – At the same time, people are very afraid of being replaced. For example, as a Nordic example, Alma Pöysti inserted into Ingmar Bergman’s Persona [1966]. Or Lucasfilm, which is digitally scanning actors’ faces for future films (including the late Carrie Fisher).
ML – There are certain technical professions where part of the process can be replaced. But we still need somebody who would give it life. It’s not doing anything on its own. But who knows? I can be right. I can be wrong. I just don’t see it. Take Animation again. Yes, some programmes can do colour, backgrounds or move your characters. We still need human beings in order to create AI. You need human sensibilities. AI on its own does not matter. We make it matter.
SG – Please tell us more about the TV Beats Screening Day, which showcases five series.
ML – Films need to meet audiences. The screening day is an idea we had since the beginning of the drama series part in 2019. We started with the conference programme on drama series, then we expanded to the Co-Financing Market, and now we show the first episodes before the release of a series. We will see how the audiences react.
We screened the first episode of television series Berlin Babylon in Tallinn in 2017 and it was a tremendous success. Screening it in the cinema is a different experience because it can be viewed as a film. One episode can be the whole world. It can tease binge-watching. You want to see the next one and the next one. Last year we had the premiere of Season 3 of the Finnish series Arctic Circle in Tallinn. The filmmakers and the actors were really happy to meet the audience. Usually, you don’t meet television audiences. There was a Q&A, and nobody wanted to stop!
SG – What about the Co-Production Market?
ML – This year, we selected six children and youth film projects but we don’t advertise them as a separate part of the co-production market. It’s the same idea when we talked about mingling between kids and grown-ups industry. We mix them. You need to decide when reading whether you are interested or not. Also this year, for the very first time, the project will be pitched to the audience. Pitching can be so stressful. So what we will do instead is an interview with our friendly mentors, a person that they trust. The interview lasts for eight minutes approximately. They are sitting calmly in the chairs. They are not standing. They don’t have that pressure. And then audiences can listen.
SG – You mentioned to us that industry attendance rose from around 660 in 2022 to the aforementioned 800 last year. Is there room for further growth, or have you reached capacity?
ML – We have physical limitations, as we take place in a small conference center of a medium-sized hotel. Also, we are a small country with 1.2 million people, and limited budgetary resources for culture. At the same time, we want to keep the festival and the industry people in the same space, in our case the Nordic Hotel Forum. Only then can interactions and discussions happen. It is this space that unites us. We create meetings. We kind of understood that we cannot grow anymore, at least for now. We would like to be a little more intimate even, because last year we didn’t have enough meeting space for everybody. But this restriction makes us very creative. When it comes to deciding what programme we are offering, it keeps us on our toes, because we always have to select the best ideas.
SG – What sensitivities do international people bring to the festival?
ML – For some people filmmaking is more poetic, for some it is more pragmatic. This mixture of different cultures makes us richer. They inspire each other. Our visitors see the opportunity to go and meet people that they wouldn’t at other festivals or in any other way. This is an opportunity for filmmakers or film creatives from different parts of the world to come together, meet and do business together in the future.
We started with the winter swim in the ice-cold Baltic Sea in 2020 (the brave casualties are pictured just above). It was mostly for filmmakers because the Industry in 2020 was online during the pandemic. The tradition continued and we started to notice that people promised to go swimming in the morning regardless of late night parties the night before, or their fear of the cold sea. You wake up, it’s 8:00, it’s dark and cold, but you still keep your promise. That is some real bonding, you know this is a person you could count on because they were not breaking their promises no matter what. Little things like that can show you who your next co-production partner might be.
SG – Berlinale films such as 20.000 Species of Bees [Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, 2023] participated in your Script Pool Film Competition and Maria’s Silence [Davis Simanis, 2024] in the Baltic Event Co-Production Market several years prior to completion. How is your relationship with other A-list festivals?
ML – We select projects because we think they are good. It’s only a bonus if they later make it to an A-list festival. Regarding 20.000 Species of Bees it’s not so easy if you are from a smaller region, in this case the Basque country, to get into big festivals, but they did it and we are very proud and happy for them. Everybody sets out to make the best film in the world. They do not always succeed in getting recognition: even if the film is good, it’s not always selected to the festivals. You also need luck.
SG – This year’s focus country is Germany. What was the motivation to pick such a powerful player on the market?
ML – German Films [the organisation promoting German cinema worldwide] celebrates its 70th anniversary this year, and we have been good partners for years. We used to collaborate with Germany much more in the 1990s, and beginning of the 2000s, not any more. But we work with five German regional Funds – Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Hamburg MOIN, Hessen film und Medien, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and Film- und Medienstiftung NRW; and are hoping that by concentrating on these specific regions, a collaboration is possible.
We have several German projects in our market, films at PÖFF, participants in our labs, and 40 German professionals coming to Tallinn. Some of our dear loyal German guests have been coming for years, and now we want new professionals to discover Tallinn as well. We will present the regions, and discuss the new law that is being adopted in Germany for 2025: what this means for the German film industry and for co-productions with European partners. This might make international producers become more eager [to work with Germany]. Something you understand better becomes easier to work with [click here for the Bill, in German].
SG – Are there any peculiar anecdotes you could share with us?
ML – I am very bad at memorising anecdotes:). I can think of one where I felt: “Wow, what are the odds!”. A Bulgarian project got a German producer in Tallinn, and the film ended up in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard. This proves everything is possible. But one of the sweetest things that has been said about our market comes from a Finnish producer, who said that we work as a lucky charm for him: every time the project is presented in Tallinn, it brings luck and the film is successful. And this is what I wish to every project out there: the best of luck!
Marge Liiske is pictured at the top of this interview. The other photos are of the Event, and the ice-cold swim. Images 2 and 3 by Janis Kokk; images 1 and 4 are property of PÖFF.
This piece is written by Susanne Gottlieb and is a co-publication in partnership with DMovies.org