Cheka Commissar Miroschtschenko
Directed by Paul Sehnert
1925
John Sweeney
The Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia in collaboration with the Black Nights Film Festival
The oldest surviving Estonian fiction feature is a tense tale of love, deceit, and violence. It follows a group of Estonians in 1920 Bolshevist Russia awaiting permission to return home. Under the shadow of the Communist secret police (Cheka), Agnes becomes the axis of dangerous desires, and love prevails when a fateful bullet ends the commissar’s pursuit.
Beyond its drama, the film opens a window onto a pivotal chapter in Estonian history: the repatriation of diaspora to the newly independent republic founded in 1918, a process the Cheka warped with bureaucracy and repression. Its portrait of Cheka’s coercion still resonates amid Russia’s persistent imperial ambitions and brutal aggression.
The live score will be composed and performed by John Sweeney. Sweeney, a New Zealand-born pianist now based in London, has been creating live scores for silent films for over 30 years. He performs regularly at the world’s leading film heritage festivals, including Bologna and Pordenone, and has long composed music for modern dance choreographers.
The only known surviving print, preserved by the National Archives of Estonia, was digitally restored in 2025 in collaboration with ANDEC BERLIN, with support from A Season of Classic Films, an initiative of ACE – Association des Cinémathèques Européennes, which is part of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
