Kersti Uibo

A loving portrait of the Estonian pastor and teacher Evald Saag and his wife Emmi. Occupying armies have come from East and West, but Evald’s acre remains a clearing of peace in the Estonian forest. Yet this peace is not the inactivity of old age; there is always work to be done; the hard tasks of daily survival and the teacher’s vocation of giving wisdom to the young. Evald and Emmi have never been silenced and will never retire. Their life’s sport has been to playfully resist every attempt to stop them from working.

In his own way, Anatoli Ljutuk is a legend of Tallinn's Old Town - a man from Western Ukraine who has built a unique world on Laboratory Street, the main core of which is the Ukrainian Cultural Center and Church. There, he engages in calligraphy, makes paper in a medieval way, carves traditional wooden toys in his workshop and makes books in the spirit of old monasteries. According to the oath taken a quarter of a century ago, he has promised to create something good every day. His daily commitment is challenged by the war that broke out in Ukraine, which Anatoly cannot passively ignore.

"Roots" tells six very personal stories - a first, big love, the loss of a child, ageing, infidelity, fragile relationships with close ones. Six different views on what our family and environment has left in us and what we leave behind.

Captures the flow and simple beauty of daily life in a monastery standing on a hill above the Serbian village of Velika Hoca in Kosovo. The director asks the viewer to set aside any expectations of hearing a “story” and instead to observe quietly as in life. The serenity of the film provides a poetic space in which the imagination may drift freely, meditating and reflecting. The camera is still, landscapes unfold, seasons change and the words give way to silence.

Apatity, a far-north industrial town in Russia, first came into being as a USSR concentration camp. Although its environment is at the brink of ecological disaster, the people here still believe in the state’s promise of immortality that can be gained through sacrificial service to the fatherland. This is how the elite in a totalitarian state buy a person’s will, strength, talent and, indeed, life, turning the human being into another resource that is as faceless as a grey lump of ore. ‘I cannot fight big corporations or state structures with a film. But I hope that there is someone in the darkness of the cinema whose heart will get a bit warmer after seeing it,’ says the director. The larger part of the film was shot during the polar night.