Just who killed the film critic??? – DMovies
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Just who killed the film critic???
//=the_title();?>Despite shrinking newsrooms, competitive influencers and double-edged AI, film criticism remains vital for independent movies, lifting the morale of creators and establishing industry awareness – the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival plays a crucial role on both fronts
Don’t panic. The film critic is not dead. At all. Indeed, film criticism is undergoing some peculiar transformation. Some of the best-known publications sit within large media groups – Penske Media Corporation, for example, owns Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and IndieWire – while specialist magazines and independent outlets face precarious economics. General-interest newspapers face a different squeeze: arts desks are shrinking, dedicated reviewing positions disappearing and the space allocated to cinema contracting. But the trade is nowhere near its demise.
Fewer permanent jobs do not necessarily mean fewer critical opinions. Quite the opposite: from the explosion of film blogs in the 2000s to today’s newsletters, podcasts, video essays and social platforms, access to publishing has expanded enormously. Remuneration for such activity is not regular and reliable enough for a living. As a consequence, some critics have to juggle other gigs in order to make ends meet. Greater participation has enriched the range of voices, although quantity is hardly a guarantee of quality. An instantly posted reaction, however popular, is not automatically a considered review.
Why, then, does criticism still matter? Its power to influence audiences choosing a blockbuster may be increasingly debatable. But for debut features, genre cinema, small national industries and films without substantial marketing budgets, informed attention can still make the difference between being discovered and remaining invisible. It may also influence festival circulation, international sales and distribution – albeit rarely through a straightforward chain of cause and effect.
That wider role is particularly visible at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), celebrating its 30th edition next month, and the supporting marketplace Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, now on its 25th edition. The event is a hub and meeting point for filmmakers and film critics alike. One where they can meet in person, share a glass of wine, and enjoy some candid and constructive conversations.
Festival director Tiina Lokk was herself a journalist before building an international event in a small cinematic market. In an interview for DMovies, she recalls: “By trainingI am a film theorist, critic and historian, and I got to put my knowledge, my analytical skills and everything else to the test.”
Critics are not simply people who deliver verdicts after screenings. They may also work as selectors, jurors, editors, teachers and programmers, bringing knowledge of film history and lesser-known cinematographies into institutions that can give overlooked filmmakers a platform. Those functions are related, but not interchangeable: curation advocates for a film, whereas independent reviewing must retain the freedom to challenge it.
Nikolaj “Niki” Nikitin, the Germany-based critic and curator who heads PÖFF’s Critics’ Picks competition, sees discovery as an essential obligation. “One of the most important responsibilities of film criticism isnot simply to judge films, but todiscover them, contextualise them and, perhaps most importantly, fight for them”, he argues.
Launched in 2022, the section concentrates attention on distinctive works beyond conventional arthouse categories, including thrillers, black comedies and genre cinema. Niki points to Bhutanese director Dechen Roder’s I, the Song, presented in 2024 and subsequently selected as Bhutan’s Oscar submission, and the Hungarian animated documentary Pelikan Blue(Laszló Csaki, 2023), This publication has reviewed all of Critics’ Picks’s movies since its inception five years ago (here is our verdict of last year’s selection).
PÖFF artistic director Triin Tramberg, whose background includes talent development and works-in-progress programmes, similarly resists restricting discovery to debutants. “For me, it’s about keeping both instincts alive: discovering who is next, while also being ready torecognise something special from filmmakers we already know.” The implication for critics is clear: their remit should not be determined by celebrity, production scale or a filmmaker’s position on the career ladder.
There are some particularly striking cases, such as Ilango Ram’s Tentigo. The Sri Lankan black comedy premiered in Tallinn’s First Feature Competition in 2023, won a Special Jury Prize and received a four-splat “dirty gem” review from DMovies critic Eoghan Lyng. Ram remembers the personal significance of his debut’s first review, but also believes that the combination of festival recognition and international coverage helped attract attention from outside Sri Lanka. The movie became a cultural phenomenon and one of the biggest box office hits in the country’s history grossing approximately U$1.5 million).
“One of the biggest challenges for independent filmmakers is visibility. You can makea film that has something interesting to say, but getting people to discover it is an entirely different challenge,” he says. The film went on to enjoy success at home and attracted remake interest abroad. Still more unusually, Ram says nineSri Lankan critics produced a book containing nine separate essays about Tentigo: an afterlife measured in debate rather than tickets sold.
Helmer Nayla Al Khaja, the first woman filmmaker in the history of the UAE, makes a similar distinction. Her first feature, the Islamic-inflected horror Three, premiered at the Red Sea festival in 2023, not Tallinn, and earned DMovies’ highest rating. She remembers being encouraged thatthe review engaged seriously with the film as horror rather than treating it as an exotic cultural curiosity. For a filmmaker entering territories where few people know the contemporary cinema of the UAE, outside perspectives can confer legitimacy.
“What criticism does create is momentum and credibility”, she says, while resisting claims that one article automatically delivers a distribution deal. As her career progressed towards her second feature, Baab, she became more conscious of criticism’s limits: “A wonderful review does not guarantee festival selection, distribution, sales or an audience”. She argues thatfilmmakers should not subordinate their choices to anticipated reviews.
Sometimes the impact of specialised journalism is easier to trace. Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event head Marge Liiske recalls that after Matt Szymanowski spoke about AI and film workflows at the 2024 market, aUS producer who read trade coverage of his talk invited him to collaborate. “One conversation in Tallinn travelled far beyond the room,” she says. This was industry reporting rather than film criticism, but it demonstrates howeditorial visibility can carry an encounter beyond the people physically present.
The festival remains irreplaceable
I have worked onboth sides of that editorial divide, writing reviews and reporting on the business of film, with a special focus on financing, co-productions and circulation. At Tallinn in 2025, I moderated Breaking the Buzz: How Trade Magazines Shape Film Visibility, a discussion devoted to the media’s influence on what the industry notices. What both activities require, beyond research and contacts, is a genuine encounter with the event.
You cannot send a robot to a festival to review a film for you. A journalist has to watch it, experience a screening among other viewers, speak to filmmakers, argue with colleagues and understand the atmosphere outside the press room. A festival is also a place where chance conversations at screenings, public events and market meetings can redirect a story. An advance screener or a press release cannot reproduce all of that.
This physical presence matters even more as the supposed battle between critics and influencers dominates discussion. Influencers are not one homogeneous group: knowledgeable creators can explain cinematic craft, bring fresh audiences to unfamiliar films and contribute serious analysis. Others primarily deliver promotional enthusiasm, sometimes supported by invitations, travel, hospitality or gifts. That is a different arrangement from independent criticism, whose value includes the possibility of a negative verdict.
The contradiction is that publicity teams still court reviews, organise screenings and seek coverage, while access can be sharply unequal. Large international newspapers and trades generally command more attention than small outlets, and some distributors may prefer controllable promotion to unpredictable criticism. Not every refusal of access is censorship: staffing, screening capacity and budgets are real constraints. Nonetheless, when independent reporters are excluded, the range of voices around a film narrows. At Venice, for instance, the Festival’s 2026 rules expressly excluded social networks as the sole basis for online press accreditation, underscoring that red-carpet visibility and editorial accreditation are not identical.
PÖFF illustrates another possibility: local journalists alongside critics and industry reporters from many countries, moving between cinemas and the market. The festival also invests in new voices. On November 8th, DMovies’ founder and editor Victor Fraga will lead its 3rd annual Film Review Workshop, with participantsreviewing a short selected for PÖFF Shorts and receiving individual feedback. It is a tangible answer to the question of how the profession renews itself.
Artificial intelligence, human judgment
AI is introducing a further layer of uncertainty. Transcription, translation, proofreading, document searches and routine desk work can become faster, allowing reporters to spend more time watching films, interviewing and analysing. But generated transcripts, names and quotations require checking, and automated text cannot be mistaken for original reporting. At the same time, publishers under financial pressure may use efficiency gains to reduce already limited editorial staffing. The technology can genuinely help journalists while further weakening the economics of their work.
Niki identifies a parallel danger in algorithmic recommendation, and rightly so. “An algorithm primarily wants to give you more of what you already like. A good film critic should do exactly the opposite from time to time: challenge your taste, confront your expectations and introduce you to something you didn’t even know you were looking for”.
Perhaps future film criticism will be backed by a mixture of independent subscriptions, specialist publications, partnerships and formats not yet established. None provides an easy solution to shrinking budgets or precarious careers. But the fact that more people can publish opinions has not made independent, knowledgeable judgement obsolete; it has made the difference between an opinion and criticism more important.
Festivals and industry gatherings cannot solve the media’s business crisis, just ascritics cannot single-handedly create a film’s audience. What they can do is keep discovery alive o through selection, disagreement, honest and constructive criticism, sustained coverage and the human encounters that make cinema more than another item in a feed. Forfilms that might otherwise pass unseen, that still matters enormously.
The images at the top of this article is a still from Tentigo. The image in the middle is from Three. The last picture is from the Film Review Workshop 2025.
Click here in order to find out more and also to take part in the 3rd Film Review Workshop, held during the 30th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival/ the 25th Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event. The one-day event is aimed at professionals and students of all trades, who want to step in the shoes of a film critic for a day.
The fields “country of origin” and “actor” were created in May 2023, and the results are limited to after this date.
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