Hanna-Mirtel is an Estonian filmmaker dedicated to women’s stories. Her short film Let the Light Rise Upon the Forest premiered at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and was selected for festivals including Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and Gijón International Film Festival, among others. In 2026, she was selected as a filmmaker for T-Port TalentBridge in Cannes, with her new project, Working Mother, in development.

She studied journalism at the Baltic Film and Media School in Tallinn and graduated with a BA in Film from Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts and Technology in Berlin. Before beginning her film studies, she spent three years travelling.

Inspired by her neopaganist post-Soviet upbringing, Mirtel is drawn to intimate stories of family, memory, and connection. Her work reflects the unseen forces that shape our identities and the inherited fragments that quietly live within us. Through filmmaking, she creates space to question who we are, how we become, revealing the contradictions and hidden complexities of human nature.

She has also produced several short films, working across both fiction and documentary forms.