Andrey Paounov

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.

An uncensored look into the artistic process and personal relationships of Christo, an artist known for his large-scale installations. For the first time since the passing of his wife and partner, Jeanne-Claude, Christo sets out to realize, The Floating Piers, a project they conceived together many years before.

Georgi and the Butterflies tells the story of a man and his dream. This man is Dr Georgi Lulchev, a psychiatrist, neurologist, Chinese medicine man, administrator, amateur chef, entrepreneur and Director of the Home for Psychologically Disabled Men. His dream is to organise a farm in the yard of the home, where the patients can raise snails, ostriches and pheasants, produce silk fibres and soybean food. This is a story full of optimism, snails, ostriches, silk, charity, the Eastern Orthodox Church, soybean food, schizophrenics, oligophrenics, psychopaths, Korean investors, Western hunters, misery, acupuncture and compassion. Compassion, business, butterflies.

Time has passed, but nothing has changed in the home of Prozorovs. Andrey takes care of his sisters as usually. With the help of a number of innovative technical devices he succeeds in maintaining their physical and psychic health. Everything is about to change when a mosquito appears in the November sky.

Two men and a bird, trapped in a snowstorm in the middle of nowhere, try to solve a mystery as it slowly devours them.

The epic story of a village turned concentration camp, turned a city, turned nuclear power plant and of its population. A world instantly transformed by ideologies, regimes and dreams of economic prosperity. The tales of characters whose lives intersect in a sinister past, nuclear future and the stinging mosquitoes flying through time, sealing their fate together.

A karakat is an unsinkable vehicle that every self-respecting resident of the Peipus shore assembles with his own hands. Originally intended to drive the owner to a fishing spot in the winter, today the karakat has become a unique “ice-taxi.” By observing several karakat-men’s routines, we aim to portray a fascinating culture of old-believers, self assembled hybrid vehicles and ice fishing in this part of Estonia.

Two boys, a few stolen car parts, a basketball and an awful lot of slaps.

The story of one-time boy Tsar, now-adult politician Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his relationship to the people of his birth country.

Homage to a person who claps the slate before each take of a film. We see the hands of a film editor cutting away the initial frame of strips of film; then we see a montage of these outtakes: a woman with long black hair claps the slate board at the start of take after take. She is Lucy, she calls the slate "tsak tsak." We hear Lucy's clap at least 55 times for the film "Tuvalu" (1999). Rolling credits at the end tell us of her career: for more than 30 years, 56 feature films, 3 documentaries, two series, 7200 claps of the slate for each film, nearly half a million claps, and over 382 hours of her image on film - without appearing in a single motion picture, until now.