Mati Sepping

A snapshot of one segment of Estonian present-day life, shown through the eyes of a child: 8 years old Lucia is leading a jolly and naughty Pippi-Longstocking-style life in a small town in Estonia. Her father Kaido, a graveyard keeper, can hardly provide for the family, her mother Maria is a drunk. Then the family receives an unexpected invitation to spend a week in Finland, in the house of the female pastor Sipra. This week will change everybody's life in unexpected ways...

Imagine a mix of Repo Man, Oliver! and Pinocchio and you're on the road to grasping the tone of this bizarre Estonian take on Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's character Buratino, a wooden boy (or boyus woodenus, as the doctors in the film refer to him). Buratino's virginal mother wishes upon a star for a son and is immediately answered by what can only be called a rape-splinter. The woman gives birth almost immediately to her little wooden Buratino.

The documentary reflects Uku Masing's life as an inner migrant during the restricted conditions in the Soviet era, including the repressions by KGB and keeping quiet about the writer. The main channel for distributing Masing's work was manual copying. As the last part of the film trilogy, the film follows the scope and influence of such activity while combining the subjects of KGB, Masing's wife and manual copying of Masing's work based on recollections by about thirty people touched by the great man.

Mati is an assistant in TV studio. Patiently he has waited for his time to become a TV star but seems that he has to wait forever. One day an alien called Tipp is sent on Earth (by its chief Tapp) to find out the purpose of Estonian children's TV show "Tipp and Tapp". Tipp nestles himself inside Mati's brains that leads the man to unpredictable actions.

People who got acquainted with Uku Masing in 1950s and grew stronger in time, either in Tallinn Institute of Theology of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Estonian Museum of Literature in Tartu, or in Masing's apartment in Vilde (now Hurda) Street help to recollect memories about the acknowledged poet, theologian and teacher. Among others, Jaan Kaplinski, Vello Salo, Kalle Kasemaa, Hando Runnel, Andres Ehin, Ave Alavainu, Viivi Luik, Jaan Kiivit, Toomas Paul and Jaan Tooming share their memories and contemplate.

A young Estonian goes to the Siberian Taiga to live as a hunter in a remote forest hut. He hopes to find his true self far from civilisation. The natives he meets introduce him to the myths of the north. The first is a young village teacher who wants to be a good wife to him. The second is a wild and untameable native who becomes his mythical bear-woman. When he accidentally kills a great black bear, his own shadow-creature, he burdens himself with guilt. However, he is given a chance of finding his inner balance. A romantic drama with mythical elements and breathtaking landscapes.

Uku Masing (11.08.1909-25.04.1985, born in Raikküla parish, Lipa village) was a theologian, Orientalist, philosopher, poet, folklorist and ethnologist. The residents of Masing's home village recall their memories about Uku Masing and his family.

A quiet Tarkovskian drama about an old man who lives alone on a deserted island which the Soviet fighter planes use for nighttime target practicing. A young mute boy is sent from the mainland to keep him company. Both are haunted by memories, the boy about his mother and the old man about his younger days as a missionary in Africa.

Young and active nationalist Aleksander Kesküla makes up his mind to use Lenin, the Bolsheviks' leader, in order to start a revolution in Russia with German money and create a new national state of Estonia in the north-east of Russia. For security reasons, five doubles will be found and trained for Lenin. All of them are finally sent to Russia to instigate the revolution. How will the real Lenin put up with all this?

At the end of the 1920-s the Finnish government proclaimed dry law which lasted 12 years. Estonian bootleggers living on the neighboring coast of the Gulf of Finland profited from prohibition......