Discoveries from Estonia World Cinema

Boy Zakhar desperately tries to enter a hide and seek game with the other village boys.

A portrait about composer Galina Grigorjeva. Born in Ukraine, she studied at the Simferopol Music School and the Odessa Conservatory, graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Yuri Falik in 1991, and pursued her master`s studies at the Estonian Academy of Music from 1994 to 1998 under the guidance of Lepo Sumera.

Bad fortune has deported a ballet dancer Sergei to a suburban kolkhoz. Here he's having his mundane fights against routine, domestic animals and alcohol.

Uku Masing (11.08.1909-25.04.1985, born in Raikküla parish, Lipa village) was a theologian, Orientalist, philosopher, poet, folklorist and ethnologist. The residents of Masing's home village recall their memories about Uku Masing and his family.

The Gold Spinners is a story about the birth, glory, and disappearance of a peculiar, invisible, and mighty business empire, the film studio Eesti Reklaamfilm, the only company producing commercials in the Soviet Union.

A family that just moved to their new city apartment, has to figure out what to do with a goat that was suddenly gifted as part of a charity program.

Raivo Kotkas is the new head of the collective farm "Victory". His predecessor Mihkel Vutt has practiced command economy, production has gone down and the cattle has partly perished. Bookkeeper Olep is quite a crook who has played an essential role in the degradation of the collective farm - quite a few good workers have left work because of his cheating. Young agronomist Salme makes up her mind to leave the farm as well. The new chief wins the workers' trust and recovers their belief in the fruitfulness of their work.

“Linear” is a dance film that conveys misunderstandings and crossing paths between people. Seemingly linear paths can intertwine with others, and anything can emerge from a sudden meeting. Random collisions show that we do not live alone but in parallel with others. How many soul mates could there be whom we live linearly and never meet? In our film, this does not happen – there is a moment in time to find and perceive each other.

Ex opera singer works as a Crocodile in a shopping center. Until a femme fatale arrives.

How to live carefree and without money.

Tuuli and Kaspar needed a break from the city so they escaped for some alone time to a cabin in the wilderness. Or so they thought.

The nature documentary filmmakers move through all four seasons and four basic landscape types in Estonia: the swamp, the forest, the coast and the wooded meadow. Everything that appears in front of the camera lens, including people, will become a part of the landscape pattern. People have habitated Estonian territory for more than 10 thousand years. Withdrawal of the ice cap created a habitat that has been adjusted to human needs during thousands of years. Lots of fields, pasture lands and hayfields have been created; the forests have been cut and planted. Unnecessary profit making has been avoided. The variety of Estonian landscapes combines wilderness, semi-natural communities and cultivated land.

An intrepid (but simple) knight embarks on a quest to save innocent virgins and discovers a Great Evil has been unleashed in a nearby monastery.

Roza has given birth to many children, all with different men. The protagonist is Rita, her youngest daughter, whose fate - like her mother's - is to endure the effort and pain of giving birth. How and whether she can cope with this, or the world?

A film about one of the best football players of all time in Estonia. The story of a Russian boy living in Maardu becoming an Estonian hero. Still, Vassiliev's career, known as the maestro, did not go unhindered. Like a philosopher, he was able to understand both the highs and the lows of his career.

The film is about a corrupt police officer helping drug traffickers escape from prison. The aim of the mafia is to catch Ahto, who they betrayed in the first part, who has now fled to Finland to his sweetheart. The action begins, with no shortage of fast cars, firearms, explosions and romance.

Freddy Grenzmann is Estonia’s last rockstar and the singer of a punk-rock band called Psychoterror. And a poet. The phenomenon of a rockstar stands outside of normality – is bigger than life. Recognizingly what we can say about Freddy, is that he is not normal – not on stage, nor in life. Freddy’s creation and life are equivalent – he puts everything out there. What makes Freddy interesting is not the social or textual play, but the ammount that he puts in. Possibility of total loss of self-control and the depth of a predictable human or metaphysical agony. This is the story of the last real rockstar and poet, his work and of a punkbands anatomy.

Hides fragments left out of the films, but also independent sections. Offers the opportunity to observe the experiments and fantasy mobility of the creators.

There are more than 800 known grove sites in Estonia, the ancient holy places of nature. Groves were protected by the religious customs of rural people and its natural environment stayed intact. This way, every grove formed into an original ecosystem due to local conditions of climate, water and soil. Many groves are well-preserved today, some of them, however, are completely gone except a few landscape marks left behind of its existence. The main value of Estonian nature gradually opens up - the variety of the nature surrounding us. Unfortunately, we are not always able to understand the value as the source of balance and inner force. In today's fast-paced lifestyle, it is worth perceiving the Finno-Ugric boreal life and its richness.

On the Eastern border of the European Union, on the River Narva, separating Estonia and Russia, lies Crow Island. The Krenholm Manufacturing Company founded on that island in 1857 was closed down for good in 2010. There is not a single family in Narva that has not been affected by the bankruptcy of the textile factory. Unemployed men, homeless children, street beggars, drug addicts, thieves—these are the people that live in this Russian-speaking Estonian town. It is like a bad dream. Where can they find salvation? Soviet nostalgia dies hard in this town, as does rage caused by wasted lives. How can they build new lives from these ruins? Is it possible to do the impossible?

Two low-ranking USSR officers are sent to occupied Estonia on a mission to track down a Captain who apparently went insane after discovering a mysterious radio signal coming from the middle of nowhere.

New Estonian punk is boiling over. A colourful group of bands with overlapping members – Skoone, Avemaria, O.V.M., Keskkool and Spekter – resemble 1980s American West Coast punk (Black Flag, X, Germs, Minor Threat, NOFX and The Cramps, among others) more than the staple acts of our Singing Revolution era. At the heart of this scene are young musicians such as Kalli Talonpoika, Riste Sofie Käär, Fredi-Methos Miller and Villu Tamm.

It’s pouring rain at the funeral. There’s a lot of crying, too much wine, several woodpeckers and a couple of dreams that fill in the gaps.

A behind the scenes documentary into the making of the cult film "Õiglus"

Estonia's first ethnographic film. Made by Johannes Pääsuke in 1913 on his expedition to Setomaa, the South-Eastern region in Estonia.

A washed-up musician has to deliver mail at night to make ends meet, all the while pondering about broken dreams and the things that could have been.

Middle-aged perfectionist Virve has made sure that her mother's 80th anniversary party goes exactly as planned, but suddenly her niece Silvia appears at the party with a surprise guest.

A short film about a little boy Otto, whose parents had promised him a dog for his tenth birthday - before they suddenly passed away. When Otto sees a falling star the evening before his birthday, he wishes upon it one more time, but realises then that the bright object is falling into the forest behind his grandma's house. When the hatch of the rocket opens, a little dog exits with the name Laika engraved on his collar. But knowing that his grandma is wary of dogs, the worried child stays in the forest with the dog.

A documentary exploring the difficulties the newly-independent Estonia faced in the early 1990s after emerging from decades of Soviet rule. The film focuses especially on then-32-year-old and inexperienced Mart Laar, who became country's prime minister while there still were tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers in the country.

In 1919 Estonia, as Bolsheviks' riots sweep through the country, a Baltic German father goes to no end to ensure his daughter's safety.

August spends his days walking around the beach looking for customers. He drags his cart full of random stuff along the beach sand and tries to sell people what he thinks they might need.

Who? Where? When? What happens in an abandoned building when the doors are closed? The former souls of the building appear and tell their stories. As they dance, they fill the space that was once their home.

Enn Lillemets' film about his close friend and spiritual teacher Betti Alver. Through personal memories and Betti’s creative masterpieces, Lillemets sheds light on one of Estonian poetry’s brightest and most engaging personalities.

Young director Timmu wants to shoot the scene exactly like he envisions it, but it seems that nobody can understand him.

Astronomers look through telescopes and see that the universe has a structure — it’s shaped like a web. Slime mold researchers look through microscopes and see that the tiny organisms form similar patterns. In their quest of discovering the nature of things, they both show the beauty of curiosity.

Miina has grown up in a safe home environment. That can’t be said about her best friend, Liidia. Besides having a beautiful friendship and doing normal teenage things in the Soviet smalltown, there is some darkness to be faced. Everything begins to change when Liidia becomes influenced with a new arrival to town, a woman portraying what she aspires to be. A new, better and more confident version of herself, so that she could find a way out of her unsafe environment.

Two elderly people have decided to start having children. There was no time for this in their youth, they had to work hard to survive. Now, in retirement, nimble old people are making children for sale to spend the night with beer, cigarettes and cocaine. It is the year 2050. The third child of the elderly is about to be born and the selling price is rising. The moral and ethical categories have changed. An aging Europe needs children.

The game of two young people in the forest takes an unexpected turn when Märt loses his friend Eha. Confused Märt meets several different characters along the way. Essütäjä is an impersonal misleading force that leads a person off their right path.

Simona and Tomas have been together for five years, but during that time the man has had several affairs. There is an immense chasm between them and the man is tired of explaining himself. Simona begins a journey to understand what a man feels, needs, experiences and considers important.

Tõnu Kõrvits is a composer in his fifth decade who doesn’t open up easily. Though he is one of the most performed Estonian composers, Tõnu prefers to remain in the shadows. His person and music carry a secret that only unravels for those who can see behind the words, who forget themselves in the music and let the sounds Tõnu created take them along on a mystical, poetical journey that changes anyone who arrives at the end. The film “Moorland Elegies” is named after Tõnu’s nine-part choir cycle, based on Emily Brontë’s almost gothic, dark poetry, that invokes spiritual conditions delicately translated into natural imagery. Tõnu’s enchantingly powerful “Moorland Elegies” has been one of the most sold classical records on the Amazon charts and forms the musical and material core of the film. This is a film about a composer, his music and the people who are deeply touched by his music.

When Miina, a seemingly well-off woman is caught shoplifting, the female officer truly uses her chance to show off her contempt. She sees a rival in the shoplifter and decides to teach Miina a lesson. Surprisingly, both women meet just a few hours later in a situation where the previous rivals become partners in crime and must trust their fates in the hands of each other.

A blind choreographer returns to the rehearsal room after years away. Dealing at the same time with the gradual loss of her visual memory, she must reconnect with touch in order to communicate with her dancers.

Where does the dream begin and reality end? In Dreaming Arizona, this is the question both for the central figures and for the viewer. Known for his staged documentaries, Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen has five American teenagers from a small town in Arizona reenact their own lives—past, present and future.

An ode to the magic of cinema bursting out from the darkness of the projection booth.

Kelly Sildaru, the freestyle prodigy, tells the story of her decade of suffering in order to recover and give a voice to those who are still victimized.

Little bird Pippo fell behind the flock of birds. Lotte decides to go after a flock to take Pippo to relatives. Together with her dad Oscar, inventor, who has just invented a flying machine, and old traveler Klaus.

The relationship between Kaspar and Marlen is far from floral. Kaspar's attempt to surprise Marlen with a flower one day is no help either, because there is no contribution from the girl. Driven by the momentary emotion, Kaspar decides to leave the plant to a new neighbor, who is a charming young girl.

In a bureaucratic future where singles must attend the government-run “Eternal Love” program, 35-year-old Alvar is given one last chance to find a life partner—or spend the rest of his life working as a gardener for couples.

A short and educational story about a 10 year old boy who spends his pocket money on his friends without thinking. One day he sets himself a goal to buy a scooter. His behavior pattern with money will change and other family members will also benefit from it.

The children's world includes as much brutality as the world of adults. Filmmakers Andres Maimik and Jaak Kilmi study the cases of the following kids: Kätlin, Märt, Marek and Indrek. All of them have experienced more violence in their own way than most of the kids of their age. The film brings the viewer to a sad journey to the hidden and traumatic zone in society. The filmmakers try to talk to the children, parents and teachers about the subjects that are often referred to only in abstract ways.

Tartu is a city in southern Estonia, whose streets and walls are awash with colorful pictures and thought-provoking messages. Who are the mysterious shadows lurking around at night with spray cans, and why do they do what they do? CANVASCITY is a story of Tartu street art through the eyes of its two most prominent rebels - MinaJaLydia and Edward von Lõngus.

If you've been hit, one day you'll hit back. If you aren't loved, you won't love anyone, either.

Events occur after two children find a box of matches and decide to boil an egg.

Dirtpeople are living in misery until the Mighty Soap arrives, who washes them clean.

The artist Lauri Sillak, aka Laurentsius, starts painting for his new exhibition in an unusual place – a vacant wooden house in the heart of Tallinn, in a house that has belonged to the creator of the art of film and photography in Estonia, Johannes Parikas and his wife Lilli.

Aunty Tiiu is hosting a dance party at her house and is thrilled when for once more than 3 people show up! Unfortunately the guests are all there because of a dragon attack, but Aunty Tiiu's best friend Marta has asked them to keep it a secret.

September is a film about the complicated choices of simple people. The internationally renowned Estonian author, Jaan Kross (1920-2007) was arrested in 1944 by the Nazis. A year after the Soviet forces entered Tallinn and he was arrested again. The accusation was the same both times: conspiracy with the underground independence revolutionaries. Based on the author's journal, pieces from his oeuvre and interviews, the film creates a story about a few monumental weeks in Tallinn, in September 1944.