Hilje Murel
It's the summer of 1990. The Soviet Union is teetering on the verge of collapse, while the little Baltic nations struggle to take back their lost independence. The Soviet Union's basketball championship is set to begin on the backdrop of a deeply divided society. The Estonian team Kalev faces a momentous decision. With Estonian independence seemingly within reach, a rising tide of public opinion opposes the Estonian national team's participation in the USSR's championship. That would contradict the people's aspirations for liberation. As professional athletes, the team makes the unpopular choice. The championship games start.
This focused family drama with a crime plot begins when Otto Müller, a 65-years-old business legend, is murdered in his own home.
A wide range of relatives and acquaintances have traveled to a funeral, and as is typical of Estonians, the sad event turns into a comical one as the evening develops. The primordial disputes that arise among the Estonians take on hyperbolic dimensions as events unfold, creating misunderstandings.
Five fresh short films on the theme "With the best intentions" from even fresher Estonian directors.
Andres is a sensitive teenager raised by his strict grandparents in a small bland Soviet Estonian town. He is being bullied at school and his only friends are the drunkards, whores, and thieves living next door.
A man falls off a roof. Another one drowns. Another catches fire. Wherever you look, men are dropping like flies. “May God rest their souls,” sigh the widows as they cross themselves somberly. This is the life and the death of the men in Virago—a village where for centuries no man has lived long enough to see his fortieth birthday. Until today.
In a quiet resort town Haapsalu four kids are spending their summer holidays together. Suddenly they are dragged into events that started in the 15th century in the local bishop's stronghold. The children must solve a difficult mystery of a clock robbery and they have to find a treasure that has been lost for centuries and contains a formula of making gold.
A demeaning game-show appearance, an ill-advised mushroom-picking outing that goes horribly off the rails, inquiries from a cynical reporter — things just keep getting worse for the middle-aged politician at the centre of Estonian director Toomas Hussar's satire about a shallow, fame-obsessed post-Cold War culture. (TIFF)
August 1991, military coup d'etat in Moscow. When Soviet tanks are on the streets of Tallinn, Estonia, all hopes for independence seem to be lost. People in the only local television station, ETV, are facing their own choices.
