Sulev Keedus
Pille, whose last surviving close relative is her daughter living in Finland, attempts to farm sheep alone while defying old age. Felix is worried about bees. Beehives remain empty, bee colonies are dying out, queens are not laying enough eggs for the new generations to hatch. Fields are being poisoned and primaeval forests are being clear-cut. Father Agaton serves small local Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church congregations, performs blessings, and administers Communion. The Estonian Defence League member Hellat and his daughter Kateriina look for silver, which is supposedly buried in the ground.
The film consists of three chapters. The Manslayer takes place more than a hundred years ago. The leading character Maara is a young bride who is about to start her life in her new family. The Virgin, set in the spring of 1949, tells the story of a young woman called Elina, who has been deported from Ingria into Estonia during the previous war. The Shadow moves in the present, on the border of real life and fantasy. The main character, Luna Lee, has decided to flee from home. Is there anything besides emptiness somewhere? The film is led by the singularity of the leading character - Maara, Elina and Luna Lee are all played by the same actress.
Film about a man who was sent to fight in Afghanistan years ago, where he converted to Islam. He now returns home only to find himself facing another kind of war.The front line in the decrepit Estonian town runs between Eastern and Western culture, men and women, common sense and madness. Somewhere amidst these battles is his daughter, who Kirotaja has decided to find after all the years of absence. His only leads are the sound of his daughter crying, heard once on the telephone, and a dog-eared notebook full of letters addressed to her. But the town has other plans for him and the women running it seem to take him for their savior from the nagging feeling of emptiness that has enveloped them. (from imdb)
The small town locals of Mustjala are the Indians of Estonia - they are ravaged by alcoholism and depression, because they've been ignored by the shiny capitalist dream. But then a German tourist ship boards in Mustjala. Could it be the realization of an old Estonian legend about a white ship coming from another land and bringing joy and prosperity for the local people?
Autumn 1944, Estonia. Tens of thousands of people leave their homeland in fear of approaching frontline. Some seashore villages remain completely empty. A young woman with huge grey eyes gets off the boat. Eetla leaves the last boat, thus giving up her last chance to escape. Defying the cold wind and rain of September, she returns to the lighthouse which is unexpected to her father Gottfrid, the lighthouse keeper, and herself. Eetla's return becomes her self-encounter and self-recognition.
Quiet Tarkovskian drama about an old man who lives alone on a deserted island which the Soviet fighter planes use for nighttime target practicing. A young mute boy is sent from the mainland to keep him company. Both are haunted by memories, the boy about his mother and the old man about his younger days as a missionary in Africa.
In Paradisum relates two disturbing stories simultaneously. The female narrator tells her personal tale of imprisonment as the wife of the notorious Estonian serial killer, Andreas Hanni. Although her story is bizarre, it touches familiar themes that run throughout modern life: the desire to be loved and the fear of being alone. Pille Hanni's tale unfolds over cinema vérité images of life in several Estonian prisons. At times the images reflect in a literary way the events of the narration, yet they are representations and impressions, rather than traditional documentary style footage of the people involved. This opens the story to a more general interpretation, often with unsettling results. The parallel contents reveal, at two levels of story and social organisation, how the bizarre and inhuman can be tolerable and even addictive in the face of our fears.
The small town of Iisaku in the middle of the large forests behind Alutaguse has long been known for its lively spirit and cultural-minded sense of life. The people of Iisaku talk about its past and present.
