ELEN LOTMAN ESC
CINEMATOGRAPHER
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Camerimage Golden Frog nominated and Black Nights Film Festival best cinematography winning cinematographer Elen Lotman has shot numerous feature, documentary and short films.
She has filmed all over the world, including Japan, Tibet, China, India, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Albania, Finnish Lapland, Russian Arctic Kola Peninsula and many other places and spaces.
Her films have won awards and have been shown in competition programs of A-list festivals like IFFI Goa, Tallinn Black Nights and Moscow International Film Festival. Her cinematography has also been selected to the best of specialised festivals, like Camerimage and Manaki Brothers, IDFA, Tampere Film Festival etc. The virtual exhibitions for Tallinn Art Hall that she created in 2020 were selected among 10 world's best virtual museums by New York times and Wallpaper magazine.
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Full filmography:
AWARDS/HIGHLIGHTS
Feature film SLEEPING BEAST
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IFFI GOA official selection 2022
Giffoni Film Festival competition 2022
SCHLINGEL - International Film Festival for Children and Young Audiences, Winner of Junior Jury award 2022
Filem'On Filemking, Best Feature film - audience award 2022
MFF Juniorfest, best youth film 2022
Shortlisted for Estonian Academy Award submission 2022
Nominated for Estonian Film Journalists' Association film of the year 2022
Cultural Endowment Of Estonia: Audio-visual arts annual award 2023
EFTA – Estonian Film and Television Awards: Best Screenwriter 2023
EFTA – Estonian Film and Television Awards: Best Editing 2023
Cinedu Film Festival for Children And Youth: Best Film 2023
Winner of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival Just Film Works in Progress award 2020
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Feature film GOODBYE SOVIET UNION
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Camerimage Golden Frog Nominee, Directors' Debuts Competition 2021
Black Nights Film Festival Tallinn audience award 2020
Black Nights Film Festival Tallinn, First Feature Competition, Best First Feature Nominee 2020
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Full-length documentary DEAR MOTHER
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Official selection Tampere Film Festival 2020
Nominated for Best Cinematography, The Reel Heart Film Festival in Toronto 2020
Winner of Best Feature Documentary, The Reel Heart Film Festival in Toronto 2020
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Full-length documentary OLGA, TO MY FRIENDS
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Official selection IDFA 2013
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Feature film DEMONS
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Award for Best Cinematography in Black Nights Film Festival 2012
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Mentions of Elen's cinematography:
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“The real star here is Elen Lotman’s cinematography which gives everything the same gloss and artificial sheen of a casino.” (Demons) Lawrence Boyce, Screen Daily.
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“Paul-Anders Simma's gorgeously photographed Olga - To My Friends captures the beauty of silence through the eyes and words of its title protagonist.” (Olga - To My Friends) Greg Klymkiw, The Film Corner.
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“Cinematographer Elen Lotman allows a certain sense of the bucolic to slip through, with the soft light of long, summer evenings permeating everything and the freedom of the countryside just outside the blocks of flats where our protagonists live. Yet while the sun may shine through the abandoned building in which the children act out their youthful fantasies of adventure and derring-do, it lights up a dilapidated interior which screams of decay and danger. There is a constant sense of darkness, of something perilous just around the corner – a metaphor for the responsibilities of adulthood crashing into the carefree world of the child.” (Sleeping Beast) Lawrence Boyce, Cineuropa
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“This is an amazing coming of age, similar at once to all Wes Anderson movies, and to the TV series "Stranger Things." Only instead of America in the 1980s, it has the perestroika Baltic states, instead of Joy Division, Alla Pugacheva, and instead of Demogorgon, the crocodile Gena. The director took - to the envy of his neighbors - a photo album in which Soviet reality shines like Wes Anderson's fairy tales. Lauri Randla decided to remember how amazing the children see this world. It turned out even too pretty.” (Goodbye Soviet Union) Egor Moskvitin, esquire.ru
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"Giving momentum with a very exciting dynamic and imaginative camera work (cinematographer Elen Lotman)." (Goodbye Soviet Union) Danzumees, film critic
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„The award for the Best Cinematographer recognizes a visual design that is filled with energy, expressiveness and exciting detail.” (Demons) BNFF Best Cinematographer award jury.
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"The visual side is also very strong, the film is in cool, bright colors, with a syrupy look in a good way," (Goodbye Soviet Union) Ralf Sauter, film critic
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"A heartfelt historical coming of age story with a stylish pictorial language, full of details, empathy, authenticity and colors." (Goodbye Soviet Union) Sten Kauber, film critic
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“Driven by an aim to make art more accessible to their audience, the Estonian gallery has devised a simple yet innovative digital offering. You won’t find VR experiences 360-views here; instead, cinematography and interactive web applications immerse viewers in a ‘distinctly spatial and ambient experience’.” (Tallinn Art Hall virtual exhibition) Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Wallpaper* Magazine
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“But the smartest museums are thinking beyond the “virtual visit.” Since the coronavirus outbreak, the best on-the-fly digital exhibition conversions I’ve yet seen come from Estonia — the world leader of high-tech living and governance, where the Tallinn Art Hall has revamped its entire spring program for the web.” (Tallinn Art Hall virtual exhibition) Jason Farago, New York Times