Ugri Film

The Soviet Union teeters on the verge of collapse in 1990 and tiny Baltic nations struggle to take back their independence. A rising tide of public opinion opposes the Estonian national team's participation in the USSR's basketball championship. The team makes the unpopular choice to participate.

The mystical and thrilling drama asks what sort of reality can give our life meaning. The film tells the story of Pia (38), an ophthalmologist, whose marriage has recently ended because she was not able to have children. As she strives to move forward with her life, Pia learns the unknown but also finds her inner strength. Unexpectedly, her deepest wish to become a mother materializes, but not quite in the way she imagined it.

One of the most extraordinary personas in Estonian cultural history is undoubtedly the writer, director, publicist, lecturer and a public figure Mati Unt. The Documentary Unt’s Hour takes us back to the bright generation of the ‘60s with their innovative and creative ideas in the literary world and the theatre. The film depicts Mati Unt as a charismatic persona, a phenomenal thinker and an anarchist who used cinematic tools to reinvent old forms. The film includes never before seen footage of Mati during his creative process and among his friends. The story centers on different groups of friends that formed over the years which provide the basis for the selection of characters. The Salon of Mati’s best friend Vaino Vahing in Tartu which brought together writers, scientists, and theatre pioneers; and the literary salon at Vilde tee in Tallinn in the home of Mati Unt and Kersti Kreismann at the beginning of Mati’s career as a director in the Youth Theatre in Tallinn.

The 1960s and 70s brought a new wave of talented young poets and writers, painters and theater innovators to the gray and established culture of Soviet Estonia. Evald Hermaküla began his theatrical career as a young, angry genius working at the Vanemuine Theater, where he staged several legendary productions. The direction of Hermaküla was clear - away from the text and the rationality towards the subconscious. The film mixes theatrical and personal memories of the author with documentary archival material and Hermaküla's contemporary thoughts on theater, life and death.