The Wind Sculpted Land

The Baltics are rich in superlatives: a fifth of the world's spotted eagle stocks breed here. One of the largest courtship arenas for snipes is located here in the floodplains of Latvia. More than 1000 wolves go on the hunt in Latvia's forests. Lithuania is the land of storks - with over 13.000 pairs, no other region in the Baltic States has more white storks.

At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.

There are two people who wake up in the same bed one morning, and neither of them has a clue who the other is. Viivi would like to run away and the man is sleeping like a log. Unlike Viivi and Andu themselves, the viewers know both very well. They know that Viivi has the worst day in her life and that Andu is a dweeb, but not completely hopeless; a rather good-hearted man. They are both hopelessly lonely people hoping that maybe there's someone somewhere - So they might as well meet.

Fred Jüssi has built his life at the crossroads between nature and culture. He is a true philosopher of the outdoors who has given deep consideration to the fundamental questions of being human. This film is about fruitful idling. A hymn for living slowly. As Fred Jüssi puts it: sometimes you just have to be sinfully slothful, and all by yourself.

The mysterious writer Mehis Heinsaar is on a journey. In such days, where he walks alone for days in a wild thicket towards the vast meadows, he calls the poor man's pilgrimages. The writer is surrounded by unusual and meaningful nature, he can still speak the language of animals and birds and see what is invisible to the eye. There will be seven meetings along the way for the traveler, which will open the magical inner world of Mehis Heinsaar to the viewer.

Jaan Tootsen’s documentary follows President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in the last year and a half of his term in office – as he grapples with the complexities of world politics and his private life. Tootsen’s keen camera eye follows Ilves at his most difficult moments, showing no mercy, but creating a gripping, rather harsh and at the same time very human portrait of the President.

This is a portrait of a gull in a classical nature documentary about birds in the city. But it is also a philosophical contemplation of immigration issues that touches us all on many levels.