A home for visual stories
Cinema — Festival
A festival seen through its people, images and atmosphere
TARTUFF is covered as a visual editorial story rather than an event report: photography first, text second, and no attempt to summarise a programme that was never meant to be summarised.
About the project
The material is built from images made across the festival, short editorial text, the voices of visitors and observations gathered on the grass between screenings.
Eight summer days, thousands of visits, and stories that remind us why we keep searching for one another. Tartu, August 2026. There is a particular moment when a city stops belonging only to its streets, squares, and bui
This year, once again, hundreds of people gathered in Tartu’s Town Hall Square. They arrived prepared for every change in the weather, brought blankets, found increasingly creative ways to make themselves comfortable, and stayed even when it rained. For Pukšta, the audience’s resourcefulness was one of the festival’s most inspiring sights. Yet behind the atmosphere of an open-air cinema lies another defining feature of Tartuff: the opportunity to discover films that have never been screened in Estonia, and sometimes even in the Baltic countries. The festival introduces audiences to new names, stories and cinematic worlds, turning an ordinary summer evening into a shared discovery.
Presented at TARTUFF 2026 in Elektriteater, Idiot explores the lives of two young men whose different family backgrounds become a starting point for a deeper look at social inequality and the realities of growing up. For director Maia Teemusk, the contrast between the two protagonists was one of the most compelling aspects of the story. One comes from a wealthier family, while the other has fewer financial advantages. Their differences create a conflict that feels both dramatically engaging and recognisable in contemporary society.
They arrive at the festival with a mattress, settle down in front of the screen and watch films until the very end. But the story of Margo Soom and Vanessa Vähi began long before they became some of Tartuff's most devoted audience members. It was here, many years ago, that they first met. And every year since, they have returned to the place where their story began.
In Sauna, a film by Hans Joosep Tamme, the ordinary becomes the starting point for something unexpected. Familiar situations take strange turns, and life confronts people with circumstances they could never have anticipated. According to the director, these are precisely the moments when we discover something new about ourselves and others.
Every film festival has two sides. The first is what the audience sees: films, a big screen, a summer evening, and the anticipation of a story that will transport them into another reality for a few hours. The second remains behind the scenes. It is the preparation, the organisation, the countless small tasks, and the people who make everything happen. For Katariina Koemets, who first joined Tartuff as a volunteer and later spent two years leading its volunteer team, these two sides of the festival are inseparable.
Marta Baldó is a film producer and co-founder of Funicular Films. Marta Baldó on artistic freedom, the invisible work of producing, and the stories that deserve to be told even when their audience is still unknown. Every film has two stories. One unfolds on screen. The other begins long before the first frame — in conversations, doubts, funding searches, and the struggle to preserve an original idea when reality demands compromise. Marta Baldó works with the second story. But she never separates it from the first. At TARTUFF, we met Marta to talk about VIVA, Aina Clotet’s feature directorial debut, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival’s La Semaine de la Critique. Yet our conversation quickly moved beyond a single film. It became a reflection on the nature of producing, the tension between art and economics, and why sometimes it is more important to preserve a question than to find a convenient answer.
On cinema, responsibility towards audiences, and stories told from unexpected perspectives Cinema begins long before the lights go down in a theatre. It begins with curiosity, with the desire to see beyond the familiar, with a story that makes us pause and look at the world differently. For Heinrich Sepp, that journey began in childhood—with animation, Disney films, and the dream of creating stories of his own. Today, his professional path is connected to the TARTUFF film festival, where cinema is not only the result of the work of directors and film crews, but also a meeting between a film and its audience. For Heinrich, that encounter carries a particular responsibility.
Some people watch films to relax. Others look for answers, recognise themselves in a character, or try to understand someone else. And then there are those for whom watching cinema becomes an endless search — for a story that can surprise them, awaken an emotion, or stay with them long after the credits roll.
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