Europe

A tribute to Estonian art and culture in the highest cinema in Berlin

Through cinema and art exhibitions, Berliners are getting to know the culture of Estonia.

November 20th, 2019
Giulia Russo Wälti, News from Berlin
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The cinema Sputnik in Berlin hosted the Festival for the Estonian Film Days for the third time. From November 16th to November 17th 2019, the numerous feature films and documentaries gave visitors insights into and an image of this fascinating Baltic state.

The Estonian Embassy has worked in collaboration with the organizers from the Sputnik Kino in Berlin in order to promote the Estonian film culture of recent years. The cultural attaché team has selected a list of films such as; “Fire Lily", "Scandinavian Silence" and "Portugal", the focus being on the search for the meaning of life, for love and happiness.

The award-winning nature documentary ‘The Wind Sculpted Land’ takes the audience on an emotional cinematic journey through the unique, vast and amazing nature of Estonia. Its primeval landscapes and wildlife have a considerable impact on the nature of the people who live there. The documentary "Ahto" portrays the incredibly adventurous life of the sailor Ahto Valter, who circumnavigated the world with his family and his baby at the end of the 1930s. The film is based on original film footage and diaries of Ahto Valter and his father Rudolf Valter, as well as interviews with contemporary witnesses.

The 3rd Estonian Film Festival is also been accompanied by film talks and the presence of some of the filmmakers and actors. In order to promote all forms of the local art, the Festival features also an exhibition by Tallinn-based up-and-coming artist Kennet Lekko, who has been living in Berlin since 2014. For the exhibition at Sputnik, he presented a selection of works that deal thematically with the challenges of self-discovery in the face of the constant fast pace of impression and expression in our modern society.

For cultural cooperation between Estonia and Germany, an agreement on cultural cooperation between the two governments was concluded in 1993. In recent years, the most significant part of this cooperation has taken place primarily through free and direct cultural exchanges. Since 2003, a cultural attaché has been working at the Estonian Embassy in Berlin, helping to establish contacts and promote mutual cultural exchange. The most important ambassadors of German culture in Estonia are the German Cultural Institute in Tallinn and Tartu and the Goethe-Institut, which opened in 1998 at the German Cultural Institute in Tallinn.

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News from Berlin