Priit Pärn, the PÖFF Wolf and some Kilplased Courtesy of PÖFF To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) was looking for someone to create a visual identity, the first in the festival’s history. “We want to enter the festival’s next decade with a fresh perspective and create new traditions,” PÖFF’s head of marketing Maria Plees said in unveiling the news late this summer.
And the team turned to a legendary Estonian cartoonist and animation filmmaker to draw up the creative idea: Priit Pärn.
“When I was commissioned to create the poster, the main requirement was that it should be original – something unlike any poster ever used to promote a festival,” the creative recalled when he revealed his design on his 80th birthday. “It did not take me long to decide that it would feature the Kilplased, the foolish yet resourceful folk of Estonian folklore, making a film.” Why the Kilplased? “Because they have never promoted a film festival before, nor have they ever been seen making a film,” he explained. “Now they are – and there are plenty of them. It is a well-known fact that when a large group of Kilplased sets out to do something together, failure is out of the question. Success is guaranteed.”
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The characters will come to life across advertisements, decorations and other visual elements of the 30th edition of PÖFF, which takes place Nov. 6-22.
PÖFF’s inaugural visual identity was developed in collaboration with creative agency AD Angels. The festival said its aim is “to present audiences with a visually distinctive and artistically ambitious concept each year, while providing a platform for an Estonian artist and their work. Through this initiative, PÖFF seeks to celebrate culture more broadly, bring cinema into dialogue with other art forms, offer Estonian artists new creative opportunities and introduce their work to both local and international audiences.”
Pärn has been depicting the Kilplased since 1974, when he worked as one of the artists on Rein Raamat’s animated film The Kilplased. He also published the comic books The Kilplased and The Kilplased Go Global and illustrated Eno Raud’s book The Kilplased.
The PÖFF 2026 poster He shared more about his work on the first-ever PÖFF visual identity with THR in an email exchange. Read what he told THR below.
How did it make you feel to be asked to create the visual identity for PÖFF’s 30th anniversary and become the first filmmaker in the festival’s history to design it?
Here’s how it happened: the advertising agency AD Angels had won the competition to design the visual style for PÖFF’s 30th anniversary – and they arranged a meeting with me. Just to be safe, I brought [my wife and fellow animator] Olga along as a security expert – you never know with “Angels,” after all. As it turned out, the Angels were delightful partners to work with, and Olga even contributed to the poster creation as a technical expert.
The Angels had a long list of leading Estonian artists, yet for some reason, they approached me first. As you can see now, they made the right choice. It was a proud moment, though I didn’t let it show. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would be the first filmmaker invited to design a PÖFF poster. Then again, I’m not just a filmmaker; I started out as a caricaturist and work as a graphic artist and illustrator. I’ve created quite a few posters over the years, too.
What guidance did you receive? How long did it take you to choose the Kilplased, and why did they seem the right choice?
No specific guidelines were given – just the required proportions. Oh, and one more thing: it had to be original. I ran through the characteristics of a “proper” poster: a striking design, instantly recognizable from a distance, a message that’s easy to read…
So, what would be the opposite of that? Wallpaper! And from there, it was a short leap to the “Kilplased,” the foolish folk of Kilpla. The whole process took about five minutes.
For people abroad who may not know the Kilplased, what is characteristic of them, and what do they tell us about Estonians’ character and humor?
In fact, many European peoples have characters similar to the Kilplased. There are villages of idiots, towns of fools, and so on. In England, for instance, there are the “Gothamists,” the foolish folk of the city of Gotham. The trickster figures of North American Indigenous peoples are not far from them, either.
The Estonian Kilplased originate from the German town of Schilda (“Schild” meaning “shield”), home to the “Schildbürger.” An Estonian named Kreuzwald translated these German tales into Estonian and published them under his own name; another Estonian, Eno Raud, swiped Kreuzwald’s stories, rewrote them a bit, and published them under his own name. As we can see, these two Estonians were perhaps a bit too clever for the Kilplased themselves!
However, the most “Estonian” Kilplased of all can be found in my latest book about them, Kilplased globaliseeruvad (The Kilplased Go Global) – Estonians in the lead, with the Kilplased following close behind! Or was it the other way around?
The festival poster has a lot of activity. What do you hope people looking at it will experience?
I have observed that people become very cheerful when they see the poster. This means I’ve hit the nail on the head. The initial impression is like wallpaper – a vibrant flash of color in the November night! Glowing yellow, complemented by textiles – not in contrast, but in harmony – and black cinema tools that act like rhythmic drumbeats. Above it all, a narrow strip of a dark, starry sky. Like a glass of brut champagne illuminated by a flash of lightning on a November night! If one looks closer at the poster, one can see a flurry of filmmaking activity. The Kilplased, the foolish yet industrious folk, are making a film about themselves! A viewer with a lively imagination will surely picture what happens next: the Kilplased screening a film for other Kilplased. A true cinematic world of the Kilplased!
But what I like most about them is their immense modesty – no one tries to stand out from the rest. Yet, I made a small exception here: since it is a film, after all, there simply has to be a star. Happy hunting!
Could we see the Kilplased return to screens for another film or series adventure?
No, I don’t think so. True, I do have an idea – and, as is the case with everything involving the Kilplased, it is an original idea. Very original! Imagine a huge screen covered with hundreds of Kilplased and Kilplanna-women, all looking exactly alike – like two drops of water. That is to say, the women look like each other and the men look like each other. And they are all busy doing something – though it’s not clear what – or why.
It would be a thriller – a battle of wills, a question of who comes out on top. And where would the money come from? So, in all likelihood, the film will never get made.
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