On the water
Vee peal
estonia
Directed by: Peeter Simm
Director Peeter Simm, last seen at EUFF in 2009 with his grand music biopic Georg, returns with a throwback to the late Soviet era of the 1980s. Andres, a 12-year-old living under his grandparents’ strict care, explores his small-town community with a thirst for experience. “Simm’s film stays on the same wavelength with Olavi Ruitlane’s bestseller of the same title, being simultaneously, as in the Estonian classics In the Back Yard and Spring, comical and tragic, lyrical and grotesque, tender and cruel. There are a lot of ’firsts’ here: the first willie-fiddling, the first love, the first close encounter with death, plus a number of farcical events which can only happen in the fertile conditions of the Soviet absurd … Still, it is not a story of the end of an era, but about the possibilities of staying human in an imperfect world” (Tiit Tuumalu, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival).
Cast: Rasmus Ermel ,Marko Matvere, Aarne Soro
Language:
estonian
Genre:
dramedy
Runtime:
106 min
YEAR:
2020
[Horák] matches each of the film’s periods to a different style: the 1960s to the Czech New Wave, the 1970s to normalization films, and the 1980s to documentary-like grainy footage. The stylisation enables a fine adjustment of dramatic effects”
(Martin Kudláč, Cineuropa).
Awards:
- Bulgarian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards 2018
- Golden Rose Festival of Bulgarian film: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Critics Gild Award and Audience Award