Ivo Felt

A retired Georgian film star, used to playing heroic leads, embarks on a cathartic journey after a casting session with a young female director, who has offered him a supporting role of a bizarre and unsympathetic character in her debut film.

For Estonian-based filmmaker Volia Chaikouskaya, the 2020 Belarus uprising was not just news – it was personal. While thousands in Minsk rose up against the brutal regime of Alexander Lukashenko and rallied behind opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Volia felt the same pulse across borders. Unable to return home, she became both observer and participant, organising solidarity actions in Tallinn and gradually stepping into her own film as a subject. At the heart of the story are three women – Sviatlana, Nadzeya, and Masha – whose husbands were jailed as political prisoners and who themselves emerged as central figures of the movement. Their fearless defiance against dictatorship mirrored Volia’s own struggle to break free from the inherited fear of silencing, repression, and exile.

Following a serious domestic violence incident, 13 year old Paul arrives in an unfamiliar town where in his pursuit of happiness he makes one bad decision after another. His seemingly inevitable downfall is thwarted, however, by a strange disabled man.

When 15-year-old rebellious Stefi goes missing, her mother Helena has nothing left to lose. Why cling to sanity when madness offers a chance for reconciliation and love?

The House portrays the residents of an apartment building, observed through its architecture. It observes the city, the human and its conditions, exploring the contrast between us as part of a society and us as singular, identity-seeking individuals.

On the shimmering shores of Europe’s otherworldly edge, two teenage girls, Hanake and her best friend are discussing their first love interest while gazing out at yachts sailing to Kyoto. They whisper prayers and poems, the language of their longings. But the magic is fading in their isolated fishing village as they’re dealing with a recent disaster, with some indulging in erotic art, some in spiritual spells. It becomes clear that intimacy alone won’t help them process their loss.

Peppered with elegiac undertones, this farewell story takes us to the world of old men getting ready to say their goodbyes to the world. Each in their own bizarre way. Nothing tragic, but the crossing of the threshold of eternity is still an enigma for all of them, just as is life itself.

Set in the future on a war-ravaged Earth, four exhausted soldiers man Sentinel - a remote military base in a vast ocean that separates two warring continents. While their tour of duty ended three months ago, the relief crew still hasn't arrived and as the empty weeks turn to months, paranoia descends, testing relationships to breaking point...

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.

A witty and sensitive observation of people visiting Central Park of Tokyo – YoyoGi. We all live in a world of online communication and rush, but there are places where one can still come to him/herself in offline. Following Japanese tradition of contemplation and harmony, an Estonian director explores Eastern way of finding the balance through nature and solitude. Hauki poetry, written especially by a well-known Japan-researcher from Tallinn Rein Raud add a new angle to the whole picture, turning the film into an endless meditation flow.

Estonia, 1872. The uncompromising new owner of Robber's Rise must battle with hard work, his spiteful neighbor and with his own family and beliefs to transform the poor land into a flourishing farm of his dreams.

The daily bread of ministers of small congregations is not sermons in the church; it is constant work with the old and the dying. A holy man who has been removed from his friends and peers and suddenly transplanted into another culture is often lonely and broken himself. Three ministers have been invited from Estonia to serve the exile congregations in Toronto. By now, the main job of Jüri, Kalle and Mart is to bury the generation that fled Estonia in 1944.

One sleepy Saturday morning a 30-year-old construction worker Erik gets some earth shattering news: his ex-girlfriend Moonika who he hasn't even seen for the past six months is about to go into labor. She however is not ready for motherhood and if Erik doesn't want the kid either, the little girl will be put up for adoption.

Karina and Martin are in a pleasent relation where everyday life flows in an effortlessly accustomed way and no small misbehaviours can shake it’s rush. Life is good. Perhaps it’s this perfection and frequent patterns that make them finally pose a question – is everything to be expected in life? This is a story about following the yearning of your soul. Longing for something other than the present and having the courage to be deliberately lost.

Priest Giorgi, a former Film Director, is sent to serve the small parish in the mountain village. To bring villagers closer to church he starts showing films there. After the screening of the first picture - "Some Like It Hot" - the audience imply that the local music teacher Lili looks exactly like Marilyn Monroe. After meeting Lili, Father Giorgi's balance between cleric and secular world starts to quiver - the woman is extremely sexy and the temptation is difficult to resist.

Lonely secret service officer Gustav meets a mysterious gypsy woman. It soon comes clear that it is a trap set by the Russian intelligence. Gustav is ordered to continue the relationship to get a better understanding of the enemy's plans. Unfortunately, Gustav finds himself struggling with the task, as he is falling in love with the enemy. Is there a way out of this situation?

The story of Edgar Väär (1929 Kuressaare, Estonia - 2015 Toronto, Canada), a freelance cameraman, who earned his nickname ‘Fast Eddy’ by reaching the scene of events before police and CBC crime reporters. A major part of his filmed footage has aired on TV. The rest of the footage, over hundreds of thousands of film stock, that he didn’t manage to sell to news broadcasters, are piled up in Eddy’s downtown Toronto penthouse rooms and basement. Do old news have value to be sold? What does the end of a person look like who has documented the ends and destructions of many others in the infotainment industry?

Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.

“Landscape with Many Moons“ is a drama about a middle-aged man who lives a seemingly ordinary life with his wife and children. The truth is, however, that their relationship has reached a dead end but they prefer the illusory decorations of living together to the free fall into emptiness. The man gallivants around between his previous and current relationships without knowing exactly what to do with them. Living on the edge starts to overburden his nervous system and as a result, actual reality and dream-like reality blend together and it becomes ever harder to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

War in Abkhazia, 1992. An Estonian man Ivo has stayed behind to harvest his crops of tangerines. In a bloody conflict at his door, a wounded man is left behind, and Ivo is forced to take him in.

18 year old Juri is seriously addicted to online gaming, so much so he becomes isolated from his single mother and pushes his girlfriend to the brink of leaving him. He decides to quit, but is soon lured back by one of his net-mates, Niki, who - when they meet for the first time - turns out to look strikingly like Juri. Niki has a web-address tattooed on his arm and when Juri types it into his computer, he gets drawn into a curious game that grants him the username RAT KING. As the game becomes increasingly dangerous, Niki vows to help Juri get through it. But the game triggers a series of life-threatening events and pretty soon Juri realizes that he is gaming for his life.

Aggivald, 23, is living in a suburban boiler-house that is fuelled by books - books without endings. The biggest passion for the young man is to write a new ending for each book. Aggivald doesn't know that his family has a story of its own, a story that reaches back to the Soviet time and has no ending either.

What does it feel to live in the turbulent times as a ten-year-old, in the country that one day thrives and the next day will disappear from the world map? The pivotal times of the year 1939 both for Estonia and the whole world changed history. The filmmakers examine the events side by side with the memories of the children of the era. Family photos, newspaper cuts, dramatic archival excerpts, memories of elderly people who used to be children at that time - all of this reflect the tragic events of 1939 and the silent destruction of the Republic of Estonia.

Alar Sudak alias Elaan is the don Quijote of Estonian theatre - predestined to eternal loneliness. Sudak's dream to become an officially acknowledged actor has never come true. He has failed the entrace exams to the Drama School of Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre and other schools. The documentary tells a story related to the Old Testament - including good-hearted Satan, water wars, unrequited love of theatre, jurisprudence, community's revenge that lasts over several generations and regimes. Elaan's life and destiny includes so much drama that he is unable to let go of it - as his actor's spirit cannot live without it.

In 2007, the artist Jaan Toomik says that the ideas that brought him success no longer attract him. He wants to do something new - a feature film. It doesn't have a concrete form yet, and until it takes shape, he makes sketches. He films, paints, analyzes, but it's all like an echo from the past. The future is hidden in his inner world, where he does not let others. Art is born from loneliness, is his realization.

Unforgettable melodies, unique timbre and a memorable, soul-stirring voice. A mystery for women and authority for men, his talent was revered by the highest ranks of the Soviet Union and millions of ordinary people. Georg Ots took the stage when a huge country was recovering from the horrors of war, and his voice returned them faith in a bright future. Few people know what his life was really like.