Tara first became acquainted with the Black Nights Film Festival a decade ago. She never looked back. “The festival has always felt like home,” she shares.

Tara Karajica, now the PÖFF Shorts programmer and Head of Industry, first attended the festival as a film critic and journalist, venturing into the world of shorts while covering the PÖFF Shorts predecessor, Sleepwalkers Short Film Festival. It is there where she was made aware of the wide gap in the short film market in terms of press coverage.

This is why, she founded in 2016 Yellow Bread, a magazine dedicated entirely to short films, ranked among the 25 Top Short Film Blogs and Websites on the Planet in 2017. But it was programming for PÖFF Shorts that cemented her penchant for the genre. “Shorts taught me that the film industry can actually be cool; that the short form equals creativity, freedom, art, talent, inclusion…It’s where talents are discovered and lifelong friendships are forged,” Karajica explains.

Last year, she hosted a panel on the visibility of short films in collaboration with the Short Film Conference as an introductory event of the industry arm of the festival. PÖFF Shorts and the Estonian Academy of Arts also organized a talk with Oscar-nominee Sara Gunnarsdóttir on the converging points between auteur and studio-led productions.

“These initiatives are important because there is a real need and demand for and interest in them from short filmmakers and industry movers and shakers alike,” she argues, adding that she strongly believes that PÖFF Shorts deserves an industry event worthy of its stature and international reputation. “With its Oscar, BAFTA and EFA-qualifying status and its membership in various international short film networks and organizations, PÖFF Shorts is most definitely the perfect event to broaden the horizons, shape the minds and develop the careers of future generations of filmmakers.”

Karajica wishes to turn PÖFF Shorts into an even more stimulating, inspiring and thought-provoking platform for talent guidance on the short film festival circuit with industry events that follow current trends in (short) film, strengthen the ties between the Baltic and international short film communities and meet the needs of the global short film industry. “My hopes and dreams for PÖFF Shorts and therefore my goals are to help it reach new heights by making it the unmissable and coolest event on the circuit, as well as a place of exchange between like-minded people, a place where the quality of selected films continues to inspire, a place of connection, of learning and of discovery,” she says.

She adds: “With its industry program that includes initiatives such as Go Long, PÖFF Shorts is in a unique position that bridges the gap between shorts and features and in doing so, strengthens even more its ties to PÖFF.”

The abridged interview was first published in Estonian Film 2024/2.