Directed by Lauri Randla • 2020 • Estonia

Described by director Lauri Randla as “the Soviet Amélie”, this 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 young Johannes (Niklas Kouzmitchev) as he struggles through a very peculiar childhood. Raised by his eccentric grandparents while his activist mother seeks a better life abroad, Johannes must try and make sense of a world spinning ever further off its axis. Based on Randla’s own childhood memories, and eschewing the air of bleak repression that pervades so many films set in the Soviet era, this is a stylishly subversive take on political and personal idealism.

GOODBYE SOVIET UNION • NÄGEMISENI NSVL
Written and directed by Lauri Randla
Cinematography by Elen Lotman
Music by Lauri Randla
Starring: Niklas Kouzmitchev, Nika Savolainen, Pääru Oja

In Estonian and Russian with English subtitles