A documentary about an old animation technique and the film studio that tries to carry on the legacy. The worlds oldest animation studio still making film with stop motion technique is Nukufilm located in Tallinn, Estland. Here we can follow the work in the studio which was founded in the Soviet era and has survived heavy censorship and global competition.
Based on Andrus Kivirähk's books "Poo and spring", "Carnival and Potato Salad" and "Ghost and Facebook", the film tells about longing, friendship, love, family and fears, which often have big eyes. The adventures of the strange characters are spiced with the characteristic warm and bold humor of Kivirähk, wittily weaving together the boundless fantasy of children and the living conditions of the modern world.
A young man enters a subway station, which is filled with posters and advertisements of beautiful men and women. Descending the stairs, he is plunged into a world he cannot control and finds himself on a strange path that leads to a chase through empty carriages, full of whispers and shadows in half-lit stations.
There exists a most exquisite man, or at least the world that surrounds him labels and sees him as such. He has fantastic abilities, incomprehensible talent, he could even be called a genius, yet something within him is restless. Big questions utterly absorb him, leading him to a place where all he can do is surrender his life, in order to find that which gives him and the natural world undeniable purpose and concluding peace.
Freak inventor Jaan's far fetched dreams about ascending to the clouds are about to materialize when he's joined by the great Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci's spirit. Instead, Jaan's wife Lisa, neglected by the crazy genius, gets metamorphosed into a winged creature and is "catapulted" into the blue skies, where dreams meet.
Morten, a ten-year-old boy, is shrunk to the size of an insect due to a magical fog gun. Soon, he finds himself on his makeshift model ship sailing through a flooded cafe.
A dog, Popi, and a monkey named Huhuu are waiting for their Master to come home. But one day it becomes clear that he’s not going to be coming home anymore. From that day their mutual lives begin. While he is actually smarter and stronger than his simian companion, Popi capitulates to every one of Huhuu’s whims in a show of obedience and subservience. Huhuu meanwhile becomes a symbol of licentiousness and tomfoolery. The film is based on the short story "Popi and Huhuu" by Estonian author Friedebert Tuglas.
What can an old apple tree tell us? What mysteries are hidden in his roots, gnarled over time? Does he remember the serpent and the lost Paradise? Our body remembers more than we can expect and imagine. It remembers the sorrow and pain of our predecessors. It keeps alive the stories of our parents and grandparents as well as their ancestors. But how far back is it possible to go in your bodily memory? The stop-motion animation BODY MEMORY takes as its central concept the idea that our body remembers, not only individual experiences, but also the sorrow and pain of our predecessors. A powerful visualization of subconscious processes and the hidden horror of deportation. Inspired by historical events: the Soviet deportations from Estonia in the 1940s.
The film tells the story of a single mother having trouble coping with everyday life. However, she finds in magic and fantasy a way to escape her reality until the enigmatic appearance of a man in her life. He will change her forever, to the point of making the decisions she has always feared. She will suddenly and conclusively have to answer her own question: what do I want? She will be given a chance to correct the mistakes in her life; will she cherish this opportunity or let it slip away?
A herd of war-torn and hungry rats tries to get an answer to the question of who is Lili Marleen from a mortally wounded young soldier stuck in a projectile funnel. Is it a reminder of first love or first relationship with a prostitute earning her daily bread? Lili Marleen is not just a distant heroine from a song. Every soldier boy has her own Lili, be it his first love from school or just an imagination. But always, no matter what happens, she is waiting for her soldier underneath the lantern by the barrack gate...