Estonia
The Soviet Union teeters on the verge of collapse in 1990 and tiny Baltic nations struggle to take back their independence. A rising tide of public opinion opposes the Estonian national team’s participation in the USSR’s basketball championship. The team makes the unpopular choice to participate.
The Judge (Mait Malmsten) is a man who represents strict rules and laws in the courtroom. However, his own personal life is an absolute mess. After the judge makes a decision to give a long prison sentence to a woman, the woman’s brother (Märt Avandi) starts following the judge to change his mind about the verdict. The judge stays adamant. The verdict is final. A conflict takes place between the men, resulting in the judge suddenly becoming a criminal himself. Unable to confess his crime, the judge escapes to Finland, where a series of comedic twists and turns lead him to a number of strange people and comical situations. However, the shadows of his dark deeds keep haunting him. To leave his dark crime behind and to fix his earlier decisions, the judge returns home.
Many years after a deadly terrorist siege in a Moscow theatre, survivor Natalya returns to the crime scene to hold a memorial evening, finally able to confront her survivor’s guilt and her estranged daughter and husband.
A humoristic coming-of-age story of Johannes who is born prematurely to a very young single mother. His destiny is to be always separated from his loved ones, to be “different”, to lose his hair because of pollution and to fall in love with a Chechen girl. All this during the turbulent times of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A gang of five children spend their summer in an abandoned factory complex. When they are forbidden to go there by the factory owner for safety reasons, the children decide to ignore the ban. This decision changes their lives forever and the friends face a grim confrontation.
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.
Centuries in the future, world’s freshwater supplies are running out. Wars are waged over water, and China rules over Europe, including the Scandinavian Union. Far in the north, young woman, Noria, is learning to become a Tea Master, like her father. Tea Masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village. After her father dies, the military moves in to watch over the village — and Noria. Refusing to give in her freshwater spring, Noria digs in deeper into her family’s secret. Within the Tea Masters’ books, she finds information that the government’s power is based on lies, that there still might be fresh water left for everyone. She risks her own life and sets out on a dangerous journey to find out if this is true.
Captain Fedor Volkonogov works in law enforcement. He is on the good books of the management, and his colleagues respect him. But one day, his life abruptly changes: he is declared a criminal. The Captain manages to run away before he is arrested. Suddenly he turns into an outcast, whom his former colleagues search across the whole city. At night Volkonogov is visited by a messenger from the other world, who warns him that after death he will go hell and be tormented forever. But he has an opportunity to change his fate and get to paradise if he repents, and at least one person forgives him. The Captain embarks on his way to find forgiveness. But he cannot even fathom what tests are awaiting him on this way.
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.
In a moment of cowardice, Detective Carl Mørck sends Rose, his junior colleague in Department Q, to the remote Danish island of Bornholm to answer his old colleague Christian Habersaat’s repeated requests. But during his forced retirement ceremony Christian kills himself sending Rose into a journey deep into her own traumatic past. Later, Department Q are embroiled into an old cold case of a girl found dead hanging in a tree.
Women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences inside an Estonian smoke sauna. Cleansing their bodies and baring their souls, they embrace the healing power of sisterhood.
Three adult siblings return to their childhood home, where their parents were allegedly murdered many years ago. Their plan is to get the house and estate ready to be sold but an evil force tries to prevent them from doing so.
When a nun in a remote convent claims immaculate conception, the Vatican sends a team of priests to investigate, concerned about an ancient prophecy that a woman will give birth to twin boys: one the Messiah, the other the Anti-Christ.
At the height of the Cold War, a troubled soldier forms a forbidden love triangle with a daring fighter pilot and his female comrade amid the dangerous surroundings of a Soviet Air Force Base.
Ingrid, an intelligent and beautiful 40-year old Western photojournalist, visits Sinai to finalise her photoshoot for her upcoming exhibition. She is kidnapped by terrorists and falls in love with one of the men.
Eva, 45, has recently divorced and is now afraid of losing both her son and her best friend to her ex’s new young, successful and brilliant sweetheart Isabel. To win back her positions, Eva goes on a road trip with her friend Marleen and Isabel, which makes the women confront different men, comical mishaps, even more comical quarrels, real hunting and most importantly themselves, forcing them to realise in the Christmas bustle what is most precious in life.
CIA agents Palmer and Gagano are tasked with the perilous mission of destroying “The Soviet Union”! As they enter the system using a VR simulation, their mission quickly turns into a delirious trap far more complex than expected, as the fabric of reality starts unraveling around them. A cornucopia of stylistic influences, virtuosic cinematic techniques, and set design (ranging from stop-motion animation to stylized live-action), Llanso’s latest blends inter-dimensional intrigue, spy-fi, kung-fu, and Philip K. Dick-esque mind-melting weirdness to achieve truly unclassifiable results.
The events of the war in 1944, from the Blue Hills to Sõrve Peninsula. Shown through the eyes of Estonian soldiers who had to pick sides and fight against fellow brothers. Choices have to be made, not only by the soldiers, but also by their loved ones.
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.
“Secret Society of Souptown” is an adventurous family movie that takes place in Souptown, a district in the summery city of Tartu. Four children – Mari, Sadu, Olav and Anton form a secret society to play hide-and seek games invented by Mari’s grandfather, a professor at the university. When the city is attacked by a mysterious poison which turns adults into children our gang embarks on a quest for the antidote. Their path is paved with challenges bigger than any other they have seen so far. It is an adventure you cannot even imagine… Will the children find the antidote in time to save their loved ones.
June 14, 1941, 3 a.m. Over 40000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are deported by Soviets to Siberia. Among them is a philosophy student Erna, a happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband Erna and her daughter are dispatched together with other women and children to remote Siberian territories. Despite hunger, fear and brutal humiliation Erna never in next fifteen years loses her sense of freedom and hope of returning to homeland. The story is inspired by real events.
Every camper’s worst nightmare came true at Lake Bodom in 1960 when four teenagers were stabbed to death while sleeping in their tent. As the years passed and the case grew cold, the unsolved mystery turned into an urban legend, a creepy campfire story passed from generation to generation. Now, a group of teenagers arrives at the same campsite, hoping to solve the murder by reconstructing it minute by minute. As night falls, it turns out that not all of them are there to play. Tonight… it’s girls against boys. Let the killing games begin.
A young man tries to make sense of the world in the summer heat of late nineties Estonia.
Based on true events an epic story of one man’s struggle for survival. Jussi Ketola, returns to Finland from the great depression struck America only to face growing political unrest. One summer night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, where cruelty seems to know no end, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may. Hope dies last.
70-year-old Mati is a passionate bibliophile whose job is his hobby – he´s got a job at the library. The rest of his little time he shares with his sweet wife. Then one sudden day death comes to his spouse. A whole life of stability crashes. Neither his adolescent daughter nor his dear books are of any help. Loneliness and indifference overrun his life and Mati plots his suicide. A strange 60-year- old wayfarer, Sass, who travels with a backpack of books and frequents public libraries to read the newspapers, brings forth a change. Bit by bit he starts to provide Mati with an interest in life again. “A Friend of Mine” is a warm expression of solitude and friendship, which helps us to overcome the bleakest periods of life.
“American summer” is a road movie about life. It is loosely based on the adventures of real Eastern European university students selling books door to door in United States.
In a pagan Estonian village where werewolves, the plague, and spirits roam, the villagers’ main problem is how to survive the cold, dark winter. And, to that aim, nothing is taboo. People steal from each other, from their German manor lords, and from spirits, the devil, and Christ. Amongst the disorder, a young farm girl hopelessly and forlornly in love with a village boy.
Ghost Mountaineer is a feature film with some hints of horror, based on actual events in Siberia back in Soviet times. A group of Estonian students on a winter hiking trip suddenly find themselves in the middle of bloodcurdling events in a Buryatian village. Olle, a closed off group leader disappointed in his mates, disappears in the mountains in the last day of the trip. Open-minded and adventurous Eero and the rest of the hikers are facing a situation they at first do not want to, but later can not solve. But no one is prepared for devastation seemingly conducted by the vanished group leader Olle. In strange country and amidst strange people, the group will soon find out that past actions and vengeance do not know the thin line between life and death.
After a heavy decision, Anna and Juhan are unable to move on with their lives. They take time off at their friends’ fancy summer house and once there, are forced to offer shelter to another couple caught in the storm.The couple assumes that the house belongs to Anna and Juhan and they do nothing to correct the mistake. Instead, they seize their new roles and start taking their mutual bitterness out on the strangers. Pretenders is a psychological drama about the truths and illusions of a relationship
A young man named Sherman survives the apocalypse in a soviet-style alternate reality and when trying to find his place outside an isolated city, gets stuck in an underground bunker.
Sensitive and restless Johannes is accepted to an elite school in Tallinn and expects life to go uphill. Instead, he becomes the victim of mental abuse by his classmates. In search of recognition, he goes to his old Lasnamäe friends, who spend their time doing drugs, hanging around, and partying, rather than focusing on schoolwork. At home, Johannes must deal with his mother’s deteriorating mental health. As the tension grows, he finds himself at zero point, where he must completely reset his life to build it up from scratch.
The first film in the Seto language in the world speaks about the brightest heroine of a small people, the folk singer Hilana Taarka, a woman who lived her whole life as an outcast in a small chimney-less hut; as an unmarried mother of children in poverty, begging her bread, doing odd jobs and singing. She always sang the truth, sometimes bitter, sometimes funny, sometimes cruel. She was feared, despised and coveted. Taarka sang throughout her remarkable life, throughout her fate, from a small Seto village to international fame. And she sang well. Really well. Taarka became the Mother of the Song, a legend. But as a woman, as a member of the community, the Seto people never really accepted her. Taarka – a despised woman and a worshiped singer.
Allide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually, and their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.
