Directed by Leida Laius • 1985 • USSR/Estonia

16-year-old Mari (Monika Järv) is sent by her alcoholic, widowed father to a state orphanage in rural Estonia. There, she must contend with the social cruelty of her peers and the competing attentions of upstanding Tauri (Tauri Tallermaa) and his reb...

Directed by Grigori Kromanov • 1979 • USSR/Estonia

An eerie guesthouse high in the hills in some unnamed European country is the setting for this Soviet sci-fi/horror oddity from Estonian director Grigori Kromanov – although the film was in fact shot in the mountains of distant Kazakhstan. Like ...

Directed by Kaljo Kiisk • 1969 • USSR/Estonia

Hailed as Estonia’s first truly modern feature film, Kaljo Kiisk’s mind-bending satire of authoritarianism and self-delusion pushed the boundaries of Soviet propriety and was banned from theatres for nearly twenty years. In an unnamed, occupied count...

Directed by Lauri Randla • 2020 • Estonia

Described by director Lauri Randla as “the Soviet Amélie”, this popular coming-of-age story captures the absurdity and the poignancy of late Soviet life. Set in Leningrad 3, a small Estonian town complete with a secret nuclear facility, the film follows ...

Directed by Leida Laius • 1988 • USSR/Estonia

The final film from the great Leida Laius, A Stolen Meeting is a vivid and heartfelt take on rootlessness, reconciliation, and motherhood at the end of the Soviet era. On her release from a Russian prison, Valentina (Maria Klenskaja) returns to her n...

Directed by Rasmus Merivoo • 2020 • Estonia

Rasmus Merivoo’s playful horror-comedy take on Estonia’s local legends is a wicked treat. The director’s own children star as Mia and Kevin, phone-addled city kids who are whisked to the countryside and left in the care of their eccentric grandmother (...