DIRECTOR Ilmar Raag

IlmarRaagOffers Hope

Multi-talented Ilmar Raag has only just completed his first children’s film Erik Stoneheart. It’s a grandiose pirate fantasy about two kids venturing off to a world co-inhabited by ghosts and parents. Or both at the same time.

By Johannes Lõhmus Photos by Virge Viertek, Priit Grepp and Veronique Kolber

You have just arrived from Ale! Kino Festival in Poznan, Poland, where Erik Stoneheart had its world premiere. Congratulations! How was the film received? It’s hard to tell yet, because children’s film festivals are quite unique, especially when the kids are speaking another language than your film. During editing we had some test screenings for Estonian kids and the feedback was encouraging. I got the compliment of a lifetime from a 10-year-old boy who said that Erik Stoneheart takes second place in his personal top films, behind Terminator 2.

You had your young actors Herman Avandi and Florin Gussak with you thwere. Who are their characters Erik and Maria? Erik is a 10-year-old introvert boy, who doesn’t dare and cannot speak about his feelings. In other words, a normal Estonian boy. According to the rules of a good genre movie, Maria is quite the opposite – a total extrovert, and a very active and temperamental girl. Maria attempts to find her mother and they end up on a journey together by accident, taking them to the InBetween-World. It is a place between our world and the world of the dead.

The fantasy world you have created is very impressive. What was your main inspiration? I was mainly inspired by steampunk anime aesthetics, and also Harry Potter. There are two key figures in creating that world, to whom I said that if you ever get absolute creative freedom on a movie, then this is it – my Finnish production designer Kari Kankaanpää, and Estonian costume designer Anu Lensment. They pulled out all the stops and I was very fine with that.

In addition to the artists, our visual world owes some gratitude to the cinematographers Tuomo Hutri and Ivar Taim who helped with the thorough arrangement of our visual environment and set the right emphasis of the scenes with lighting.

It’s not very usual to use two cinematographers simultaneously. It’s a bit odd indeed, but they learned to work together very well. The reason was that the film relies on special effects quite a lot, meaning that they have to be taken into account already on the set, not to spend too much money in post-production. Due to Ivar’s background, he is familiar with new technology, and we hired him as a DoP who can shoot special effects. During the shoot, it became clear that his contribution is much bigger. Generally, Tuomo sat behind the monitor, checked the wider picture and guided the lighting, and Ivar dealt with the camera and composition of the frame.

It is your first children’s film as a director. Given your background and your public persona, wouldn’t it have been more logical for you to shoot a war movie? How did you end up making a children’s film? The standard answer would be that I’ve always had a little boy inside me. It’s true in a sense that about a quarter of the films and books in my home collection are Japanese anime, fantasy stories, or children’s films. For instance, I am a big fan of Harry Potter and bought the first book already in 1999. When the third book came out, I remember going hunting for the French edition during Cannes Film Festival, because the French translation came out earlier than the Estonian one.

When I was ten, I remember this feeling of dislike for simplistic, moralizing films that were done in the manner to avoid insulting kids in any way, and keep them exactly inside the boundaries where all the kids should belong in the grown-ups’ opinion. Completely disregarding the fact that the kids have long evolved beyond those boundaries.

It sounds like a promotional quip, but Erik Stoneheart is the kind of film I would like to have watched as a kid.

It sounds like a promotional quip, but Erik Stoneheart is the kind of film I would like to have watched as a kid.

11-year-old boy called Erik (Herman Avandi) and Coldshoe (Juhan Ulfsak). Earlier you have written your own scripts, but with the last two features you have adapted someone else’s story. How do these two practices differ for you as a director? I am comfortable when I can bounce ideas back and forth. Hence, the work of the writers is very important. On the other hand, I see that the script will only really materialize during rehearsals with the actors. When rehearsing, it becomes apparent sometimes that the scene doesn’t function, and we have to find a solution together. Sometimes that includes a rewrite, also done in collaboration with the actors. It is especially important when working with children, because I cannot make them say just any kind of text in a be-

lievable manner. In case things don’t work, we all start searching for a situation, or wording, that would come naturally. The scenes can change quite a lot as a result, but the initial inspiration certainly came from the script written by Livia Ulman and Andris Feldmanis, and I hope they won’t mind the interpretation we came to, together with the actors.

In my opinion, the director doesn’t just have executive power to complete this performance along previously set guidelines, but is an author with a vision, who has to find that special something that addresses him personally in the process.

How did the young actors get along with your vision? With kids, you need to rehearse the scenes so much that they forget they’re citing someone else’s lines. I was extremely lucky to find exactly the right kids for this film, because the final result reflected something

that I value most in an actor – the ability to complete the task with adding something extra that we haven’t discussed previously. Then you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot.

How can you manage to be equally very active in a creative and social sphere? For most of the time I cannot. It comes and goes in waves – at some point, one seems more important, then the other. But I don’t think that art is relevant for the sake of art. It’s always a means to say something, and when I manage an NGO for aiding Ukraine, or organization in the third sector, I am essentially standing for the same thing. In my case, it is idealism in part, but I crave to see paradox and maybe even negative traits in this idealism, so that I can attempt to start a debate with myself as well.

The same kind of dilemma is evident in your dual background as a strategic communications expert, and a filmmaker. In strategic communications, the message has to be clear and singular, but a film that is readable in only one way, is likely a very boring one. How do you address this contradiction, or even overcome it? There’s a type of movie I call “American journalistic films” that handle the topic according to the same standards applied to journalism, giving both sides a chance to speak. Or, forcing people to think, using the Brechtian method of alienation.

Out of my films, The Class is the clearest example of victims becoming murderers and the formula appears where the two are equated. I wish for a film that leaves enough space for the viewer to think, because the clearly formulated and finalized message will be fast forgotten. There’s a term in psychology, the Zeigarnik effect, meaning something like people remember unfinished activities better than completed tasks. I would leave some things unsaid in a film, if possible.

But I would like to use another differentiation here, between the aesthetics of Plato and Aristotle. Plato encourages us to look at the world and find the truth ourselves. Everything we see is but shadows on the wall of

Besides film directing, Ilmar Raag manages an NGO for aiding Ukraine. a cave, when we are really interested in the sun, the truth. This is something similar to what modern art or arthouse cinema is aspiring towards, putting all the responsibility on the shoulders of the viewer who needs to figure out where truth is hidden. Aristotle, on the other hand, says that the point of tragedy is to offer people a positive example through sublime deeds. I feel that there are themes where I will gladly lead by example and do not mind adopting a moralist stance.

Regarding The Class, for example, it felt wrong to show violence in a neutral, objective manner. The moral lies within showing the mechanism of violence, so that we could condemn it.

The line between the two – delivering a clear message and leaving things open to interpretation – is especially thin in the case of children’s films, because these are often trivialized by force feeding the viewers the one and only singular moral of the story. In Erik Stoneheart, the line between the two should become evident during their journey home from the In-Between-World. Philosophically speaking, the condition of leaving that world is to show that you are alive. And we ask a question: what is the critical condi-

Erik moves to a villa his family inherited. He discovers another family living there – Maria (Florin Gussak) and her dad.

tion for showing that a person is alive? It’s not moving your arms and legs, or the beating of your heart. The moral nucleus of Erik Stoneheart lies in a sentence that Erik says in the end of the film: “You are really alive when you can hold someone’s hand”.

Your CV shows that you became interested in state defence just about the same time when you started making movies. True, that’s it. Earlier on, my work at Estonian National Television was so all-encompassing that there was no time left for either filmmaking or state defence. But I’ve always been interested in the conflicts between people. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the theory of screenwriting or dramaturgy is also largely the theory of conflict. Maybe we become interested in what is unusual or differs from the daily routine of logic. As soon as you start seeing social conflicts in movies, you start noticing them more in real life. So, maybe the themes in my films led me to a heightened sense of conflict in the real world.

Since February 24, 2022, Estonian cultural figures have been very active in voicing their opinion about state security and founding different related initiatives. I feel that the field of culture has been more active in that sense than other fields of life. I’d rather use the term creative people, because we all participate in culture equally. And it is the task of a creative person to react to world events. Painter Marko Mäetamm put it nicely at a conference in Paris not long ago: “As soon as the war begins, artists start drawing flowers”. It is a nice thought, and true in a way, because creative people don’t generally embrace or address destruction and violence. The majority of art we make is concentrating on glorifying life. The world today casts a shadow of doubt upon goodness, care, and taking care of the weak. Current events are abusive to the sphere where creative people have been working until now.

You are in the middle of organizing winter combat outfits for Ukrainian soldiers. You fight for freedom in Ukraine, how do you still manage to act the part of a director whose film is about to come out? If it were another kind of a film, it would be more complicated, but I see a common link between the two. I remember the feeling I had in April or May, when I knew that I should start writing the next script or a book, because the preparations had been made. Suddenly I understood that I am not capable of doing that because I end up reading the news about Ukraine all the time. I tried, until I understood that some part of my identity, that I hadn’t been aware of so much before, is so agitated that I cannot begin a new film.

I have told myself, that while there is war in Ukraine, I will do my very best to try and help to put an end to it. As for Erik Stoneheart, it dawned on me that Tolkien finished “The Lord of the Rings” during World War II. I see Erik Stoneheart as a film that hopefully talks about the world in a hopeful manner during these hard times, and not drag us into the mud, but allow us to take a step back. EF

Ilmar Raag is one of the socially most active filmmakers in Estonia. He writes and publishes essayistic work regularly, is a member of the Estonian Defence League, participates actively in the daily activities of the NGO Slava Ukraini, in order to send necessary supplies to Ukrainian soldiers, and help them in their fight for the future of the world. Earlier, Raag has headed the Estonian National Broadcast, hosted a unique TV show about cinema, acted as strategical communications advisor for the Estonian government, and directed five feature films – The Class (2007), A Lady in Paris (2012), Kertu (2013), I’m Not Coming Back (2014), and Erik Stoneheart (2022), that will have its domestic premiere at the Black Nights Film Festival Just Film section in November, followed by theatrical release.