Carl Olsson

Stories about Tartu and Southern Estonia, capturing the tricks and mysteries about the arts of survival. Renowned filmmakers from Estonia and abroad bring us uniquely wild tales of people, communities, and the culture they live in. In these stories, we meet peculiar vehicles known as “karakat” from Peipsi, charming non-places of Tartu, the wild German woman living an off-grid life without water and electricity, mischievous goats and crazy village parties, the diverse Annelinn residents and nostalgic Petseri, slime mould and space exploration, and of course, the artists of survival from today and past.

When we die, there are still some practicalities that need to be taken care of before our time among the living is finally over. In Meanwhile on Earth we enter the world around our end station, an industry of death. It is a place where the existential meets the mundane, the sacred meets the profane.

Vintersaga, is a song-structured homage to the Swedish melancholy. Through 24 stanzas the film observes a mosaic of situations and individuals, each with their own doubts, memories and dreams, shaping a picture of a land tinged by the bitter cold wind.

The House portrays the residents of an apartment building, observed through its architecture. It observes the city, the human and its conditions, exploring the contrast between us as part of a society and us as singular, identity-seeking individuals.

The scene is set, familiar and unfamiliar at once. Two men engaged in a gaze magnetic enough to lock their lips and pull them to stand. What does this kiss serve? Is it passion, connection, expression, obligation? Maybe it’s all of it and more, or nothing more than touch.

What is folk culture and what is nationality? Are they set in stone or can they be changed and developed? At a community center furnished with pinewood, cultures and generations meet. Folk is a dance film that heats up what is frozen in time.

Patrimonium is an exploration of time, a film about the noble landed gentry, constantly renegotiating the borders between history and modernity. Through scenic tableaus and a strong sense for detail, the film paints a world of tradition and perfection, and in it, the human, with its efforts to fit in to the grandeur of an idea.