Discovery Campus, a five-day programme of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, helps emerging film professionals from the Baltic region to develop their international careers.
“It is a vital nexus where upcoming talent can network with like-minded filmmakers and showcase their work against the backdrop of an A-list festival,” says Dhanushka Gunathilake, the programme’s new head, of the event that launched in 2021.
The idea is to pull together several different festival talent programmes: script development (through Script Pool), Black Night Stars (to promote young Baltic actors), Music Meets Films, for composers, Black Room (looking at art department and production design), Frame Within the Frame (for aspiring cinematographers) and, now, new programmes Breaking Into The Industry (for aspiring producers) and Tallinn Industry Academy (exploring sales, marketing and distribution).
With a background in cinematography, the Sri Lanka-born, Estonia-based Gunathilake began his relationship with Discovery Campus when he became project manager at Frame Within A Frame in 2023.
“My idea was to build something that film schools could not,” he says of his vision for the programme. “Film schools are teaching the art and craft of filming. What they cannot teach is how the audience works, the afterlife of the film and the networking part. The biggest challenge for emerging filmmakers is to have somebody to listen to their project. Here, what we do is get them to screen their films and let these mentors watch their films. Then the mentors screen their films, and they discuss. Building dialogue between professionals and emerging filmmakers is one part of it.”
Gunathilake has ambitious plans for making the Discovery Campus a year-round programme.
“From next year, we are expanding the programme into a year-long mentorship and masterclass curriculum,” he explains. “Applications for this new journey will open in February 2027, running through January 2028. We are thrilled about this evolution and will be sharing more details at the upcoming Berlinale.”
In the meantime, this year’s Discovery Campus is offering a typically eclectic series of talks, masterclasses and workshops. Among other highlights, Oscar winner Christopher Hampton, whose credits include Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement, will be sharing the secrets of writing successful screen adaptations. Inbal Weinberg, renowned for Suspiria, will give a masterclass on production design; cinematographer Michael Bauman from One Battle After Another will be sharing his expertise and former Israeli Film Fund head Katriel Schory will talk to aspiring producers about the entrepreneurialism needed to break into the industry.
The Campus maintains partnerships with many leading professional bodies, including the American Society of Cinematographers, the International Casting Directors Association and The Production Designers Collective. These bodies all nominate mentors who then take part in the campus.
The Discovery Campus head has plenty of success stories over the years. Young participants who have gone on to m make a mark in the industry include Estonian actress Henessi Schmidt, who landed her breakout role in Valhalla after being spotted by a casting director who was acting as a mentor at Black Nights Stars in 2020. “It’s always inspiring to see how far our talent ecosystem reaches,” Gunathilake says of such successes
The 65 participants, generally young professionals aged from 18 to 30 , are very carefully chosen. “It’s an international programme,” says Gunathilake. “We get applicants from everywhere in the world, Asia, the US, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Every year, there is a region in focus. This year, it is the Baltics themselves, which means their applicants are given priority.”
As the Campus expands, Gunathilake is determined to ensure former participants remain involved. His five-year plan is to create a ‘talent bank” of participants, a database which producers or filmmakers can use to identify emerging talent linked to past editions of the campus that they can work with.
Discovery Campus is a collegiate gathering that always has sessions at which all the participants come together, and the boundaries between different disciplines are deliberately broken down.
Overall, Gunathilake describes Tallinn as “a very cosy festival where you meet everyone and they are not super busy like in Berlin or Cannes.”
And, yes, that means there will be plenty of socialising alongside the industry events. “We have networking parties every evening. It is one of the most important things because you don’t get to meet people in person often these days. Those opportunities, they should be grabbed.”
Discovery Campus is taking place from November 16-21.
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