On the night of 14 June 1941, many thousands of inhabitants of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — identified as "anti-Soviet elements" by the USSR, which had annexed the Baltic States the previous year – were forced onto trains and sent to the remotest outposts of Siberia. Thousands of families were torn apart and forced to endure brutal conditions for nearly two decades until their eventual release. We follow the story of philosophy student, Erna, who gets abducted with her daughter. Together with other women and children, they are deported to a Gulag in Eastern Siberia where they will remain for 15 years. Yet Erna never forgets her home or stops longing for it.
A hypnotic series of highly expressive black-and-white images, tableaux vivant, opening spaces that exist in-between the stillness and perpetual motion, the official history and intimate experience."I was inspired by the sentence when Erna says, 'I feel like time has stopped. My mind is travelling in Siberia, but my thoughts are at home.' Then it struck me that I had to find the visual language to express the same thing through the camera. Tableaux vivant seemed like the right choice because I wanted the audience to feel the same thing, in a sense." (Martti Helde)
Martti Helde
Born in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1987, Helde graduated in film direction from the Baltic Film and Media School. He has completed further directing courses both in Europe and the US and is currently attending an MA course in stage directing. He has won several competitions and scholarships with his projects. In the Crosswind is Martti’s feature debut.
filmography (selection)
2008 Päev, mil ma kasvasin (Day When I Grew Up) (short)
2009 Külm on (Fat Me!) (short)
2014 Risttuules (In the Crosswind)
2014 Superbia (short)