DOCS Best of Estonian & Finnish Docs

One Man's Pain

Best of Finnish Docs & Estonian

DocPoint, running simultaneously in Helsinki and Tallinn, is one of the largest documentary festivals in the Nordic countries. The festival celebrated its 21st edition in 2022.

By Filipp Kruusvall

For Finland and Estonia, it is the main event for international and national creative documentary films. Every year, it brings more than a hundred of the best and most talked-about documentary films all over the world to the screens of Helsinki and Tallinn.

Since 2010, when the sister-festival DocPoint Tallinn was established, cooperation between the documentary industries of the two countries has advanced significantly.

ICE AND FIRE DOCS The opening kick of the documentary year was in January 2022 when the last session of the second edition of Ice and Fire Docs took place. It’s the documentary workshop for developing Finnish

Pildiallkiri

Ice&Fire Docs participants in Billnäs Ruuki, Finland.

Two Hours to Happyness

and Estonian film projects. This initiative’s, organized by Estonian and Finnish Documentary Guilds and supported by Estonian Film Institute and AVEK, leading tutor is renowned Danish consultant Mikael Opstrup. The session was dedicated to sales and distribution in these very challenging times for the film industry. It brought to Estonia acclaimed tutor and mentor in this field, Gitte Hansen, an executive producer of more than 20 international independent documentaries for First Hand Films in Zürich, where she was deputy director and headed sales and acquisitions for many years.

DOCPOINT FINEST MARKET Ice and Fire Docs was followed by the opening of the DocPoint film festival. In 2021 it launched two annual competitions for the first time, 2022 was the start of the festival’s industry initiative. In cooperation with DocPoint Tallinn a unique platform DocPoint FINEST Market was created, designed to exclusively present Finnish and Estonian documentaries. The timing was perfect, as international competition in the region is fierce, and film industry structures are transforming. Therefore, there’s a need to react swiftly and offer something agile and precisely targeted to the international market. DocPoint wants to contribute to the success of Finnish and Estonian films by offering curated and high-quality Finnish-Estonian documentary films to international documentary makers and buyers.

DocPoint FINEST Market took place on an online platform from the 31st of January until the13th of February 2022. 20 Finnish and Estonian documentaries were ready for acquisition or distribution, both feature-length and shorts. It gave international buyers and distributors a chance to explore the newest works of makers such as Pirjo Honkasalo, Kiur Aarma, Alina Rudnitskaya, Suvi West, Moonika Siimets and many more. Most of the films presented at the DocPoint FINEST Market were world premieres and haven’t been seen elsewhere yet.

Besides that, FINEST Market also had a section of Works in Progress that presented promising projects still in production.

Hippodrome

TWO HOURS TO HAPPINESS OPENS THE FESTIVAL One of the festival’s highlights was a world premiere of the Estonian documentary Two Hours to Happiness by Moonika Siimets. It premiered both at DocPoint Helsinki and DocPoint Tallinn and was also presented at FINEST Market. The significance of this film is that it tells about a phenomenon that has had a strong impact on both Estonian and Finnish society. More than 70,000 Estonians, or around four percent of the country’s population, lives and ESTONIAN DOCUMENTARIES SELECTED TO DOCPOINT FINEST MARKET

• u.Q., Director Ivar Murd. Producer

Margus Õunapuu. Filmtower. Estonia. 83 min, 2021 • Yoyogi, Director Max Golomidov.

Producer Volia Chajkouskaya. Allfilm,

Volia Films, Kofuba. Estonia, Japan. 74 min, 2022 • Nowtime, Director and producer

Aet Laigu. Meteoriit. Estonia. 13 min, 2022 • Hippodrome, Director Vladimir

Loginov. Producers: Pille Rünk, Elina

Litvinova. Allfilm. Estonia. 85 min, 2022

WORKS IN PROGRESS

• Skype Story, Director Kiur Aarma.

Producer Margus Õunapuu. Film

Tower, Nafta Films. Estonia, 59 min, 2022 • One Man’s Pain, Director Kullar

Viimne. Producer Erik Norkroos.

Rühm Pluss Null, Estonia, 90 min, 2022

works in Finland, while their families, parents, children, and homes are in Estonia. Estonians form the largest immigrant group in Finland.

Two Hours to Happiness by Moonika Siimets doesn’t judge; it simply looks at the possibility of living a life between two countries. Her film tells stories of longing, solitude, searching for happiness, and the conflict between reality and human desires. It shows that sometimes leaving your home isn’t an easy decision, even if it is the only possible one.

The film is a humorously wistful documentation of people living their peculiar lives in the snowy fields of Lapland, the spartan apartments of Vantaa, the hotel lobbies, hospital corridors, construction sites, and grandmothers’ kitchens as they wait for their grandchildren to come back home. It is a mixture of confessions where people tell their very personal stories that don’t make it to the front pages of the media. Two Hours to Happiness tells a story about Estonians living in Finland, but the film has a very universal narrative that all viewers can relate to. EF