TALENT DOCS
Pealkiri New Doc on the Way
Filipp Kruusvall interviews director Marta Pulk. Her new international documentary film is about the isolation during the pandemic.
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Photo by Sigrid Kuusk
lthough the COVID19 crisis has shaken the whole world, there are only a few films about the epidemic itself, and its impact on humanity. It might be that Tell Me from Estonian di rector Marta Pulk will be one of the first poetic documentaries that show the global effect of the epidemic on such a large scale. To premiere in autumn 2021, the film tells the story of life in isolation, which people worldwide have had to experience repeat edly during the year. At a time when peo ple are feeling so much but have few out lets to express it, 19 filmmakers from 12 countries set up a series of voicemail box
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ESTONIAN FILM
es around the world. People are encour aged to call and leave messages with anon ymous thoughts or feelings be it stories or songs, laments, or proclamations. These calls are brought together as a unique portrait of humanity in isolation. Marta, how did the idea for this movie come to you?
As isolation was imposed worldwide, it was a situation the world had never wit nessed and one that I could never have imagined. Suddenly, there was so much happening, so much to fear, but no one to share it with. It reminded me of a phenom enon called the Wind Phone in Japan. Af ter the tsunami in 2011, one man set up an old phone booth in his backyard to speak to his deceased cousin. Collectively it was a time of overwhelming grief, of unexpect ed and insurmountable loss for hundreds of thousands of people. There was so much pain and no place to put it. Soon enough, thousands of strangers started showing up at the man’s phone booth with
a rotary phone connected to nothing. They came in silence, picked up the disconnect ed receiver and privately spoke to their lost loved ones while overlooking the ocean that had swallowed them. And thinking of that, I realised that sometimes all we need is a space, a silence to shelter the Other. So in these extraordinary cir cumstances of isolation, we created that space—the imaginary Other in the silence after the tone. To listen to people, what they were feeling and experiencing. Were they stuck alone or with their children, with violent partners, or elderly parents? Were they afraid for their lives or com pletely elated? Did they want to lament or just sigh? What did they need to get off their chest, and how much of it was the
