Competition Documentaries, Estonia 2007, 52 Min., English subtitles
“Everyone owns a house, nice furniture, a radio and a television set. That’s more than we ever dreamed of!” The people in Kolkhozes were happy, as this film from the 50s shows. At the time, Estonia was one of the most western republics inside the USSR. Today Estonia lies on the eastern bounds of Europe. Surveys held 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union show that more than half of the Estonians who had witnessed the Soviet era feel more positive about the past than they do about the present. But was Estonia really the socialist paradise that it had presented itself as in the news, commercials and documentary films of the time? “Greetings from Soviet Estonia!” contrasts a series of eastern nostalgia-laden filmic documents from the 50s to the 70s with the accounts given by three former dissidents – MEP Tunne Kelam, nun Lahle Parek and emigrant Tiit Madisson. Their memories raise images of another, less harmonious Estonia.
No screenings are available for this film.