Anti Naulainen

The Wayfarers

This is the story of three different generations of Siberian Estonian women whose ancestors were deported from Estonia as criminals in the 19th century. Instead of prison, however, they ended up in paradise - a fertile land where people quickly built their lives. 170 years later, the situation has reversed: who has already "got used to life here", but for whom, on the eve of the war, it is the last time to return to paradise, which on this occasion is Estonia.

Nightingale

Autumn 1944 in Tallinn, Estonia. German forces retreat as the Russian army settles in. Young soldier Aleksei is sent from the frontline to work in a prison filled with Estonian political prisoners.

Skin of a Mandarin

The film delicately follows 25-year-old Anna, whose mother has died suddenly. She wants to send her Orthodox mother on her last journey according to customs, but she runs into bureaucratic rules that do not allow Anna to dress her departed mother herself. This conflict brings her together with Maria, a 45-year-old funeral home worker, who in this story represents the hidden fears of death and grief on a deep emotional level.

Sundial

Sundial takes us on a journey through the mists of the Estonian countryside. In each house whose door Liis Nimik opens, live people who have chosen to carve their existence at the fringes of modernity. Far from our tumultuous world, the rhythm of life is tranquil and peaceful. Here, humans seem to have found their place, living in harmony with nature.

County Court

An absurdist court drama where a mother and a father, ex-spouses, fight over the custody of their 5-year old son. However, the whole process takes place in the middle of a grain field instead of the classic court room. On that field the courtroom has no boundaries much like the mother and father whose actual goal is to exact vengeance on each other with no regard to the means used, forgetting their child entirely.

Rain

The film follows 12-year-old Ats, whose older brother Rain unexpectedly returns to the family home in a small seaside town to face their authoritarian father Kalju and their mother, a woman on the verge of losing love. Ats is a witness to the clash between his father and brother, two stubborn men from different generations with radically different views of the world.

The Riddle of Jaan Niemand

After ten years of war, plague and famine, the land is swept clean of people. The few remaining souls are scattered about, living in misery and lacking hope. An anxious silence hangs over the land. On one particularly starry night, two peasants find a stranger on the seashore.

They Say Tomatoes Love Rock Music

Aleksander, an old gentleman, maintains a blooming garden surrounding his old house in a sleepy resort town. Karl, his grandson, spends the summer with him and learns about the ways of the nature. Together with autumn rains arrives Aleksander’s daughter Marju, who hopes to inherit the old man’s house, tear it down and put up a guesthouse on the lot instead.

Distance

On a misty sea drifts a lonely boat. While unseen danger lurks in the fog, the boat's motor is out of order and visibility is as clear as the relationship between the two men sitting in the boat. Do they get out of the mist? Or is it already too late?

Playing Pirates

A boy and his family move into a wooden house the family has inherited and he becomes friends with a girl who now has to move away. To save their friendship, the children find no other way but to embark on a perilous adventure.