Against the Spirit of the Times After a prolonged hiatus from feature films, director Marko Raat makes a return with 8 Views of Lake Biwa, a collection of eight love stories from Japan set against the backdrop of the Estonian countryside. By Andrei Liimets Photos by Virge Viertek
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n the early 2000s, you were among the most active filmmakers in Estonia, winning the film critics’ yearly award twice. Now, there’s been over a decade between two of your feature films. Why such a long hiatus?
It’s not unique. If you don’t become a messiah with your first or second film - not winning significant awards or garnering hundreds of thousands of viewers in Estonia - you end up at the back of the line. Officially, it’s not like that, but filmmakers don’t have a stable place to start their next project, and it’s easy to say no. Inevitably, you fall into a hole. You try for a while, but if things don’t work out, you think that maybe you should do something else in the meantime. On the other hand, I’ve been working with documentary films since the end of school, and I quickly got a taste for it. I could pursue the same things there, experience the same tension on set, the excitement of planning, and use very similar methods to diffuse the tension of the main characters. It’s just that it’s so much more time-consuming for the “non-actors” to have authentic moments in front of the camera. At the same time, you have the time when working alone, and I really enjoy filming myself. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to make another feature film. I understand Mark Soosaar very well, why he gave up on fiction after one film. At a time when nothing was taking off, friends suggested making an exhibition for the Estonian
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