For many years, the experience of Estonians in Stalin’s labour camps was a taboo subject. It was not until 1991, when Estonia gained independence, that this dark chapter of the country’s history gradually began to emerge. In this film, journalist and documentary film maker Imbi Paju takes a personal approach, telling the story of how her own mother, born in 1930, was arrested together with her twin sister in 1948 and interned until 1954 in Soviet camps. The film also recalls the many forms of oppression meted out to Estonians from 1939 onwards, both by the Russians and the Germans. Interviews and vintage footage create an incisive image of the totalitarianism, oppression and brutality of the Soviet authorities, the NKWD and the KGB, portraying the sufferings of the people under German occupation in WW II and the deportations to Siberian labour camps by the Red Army after the “liberation”.