Kumu Documentary: Pärnu Film Festival presents
Films will be followed by a discussion between the Minister of Health Riina Sikkut and film director Mark Soosaar
Bon Voyage!
Dir Karine Birgé
Belgium 2023, 54 min
In French, with Estonian and English subtitles
Special mention award from the festival jury in the category of best artistic achievement
A 102-year-old grandmother wants to end her life through euthanasia.
The French director Karine Birgé offers a touching narrative on her grandmother’s decision to leave France for Belgium to receive medical assistance in dying at the age of 102. Using the sound traces she kept, she summons a small theatre of dolls and objects, brings together her loved ones and friends, and reweaves a world around her grandmother, who left life in strange tranquillity. An ingenious work of great poetry, embodied through animation editing, combining modesty and emotion.
Life Without…
Dir Mark Soosaar
Estonia 1987, 30 min
In Estonian
A film about a young person deprived of love, warmth and affection, ultimately leading to suicide.
Life without love can lead even a young person to suicide, let alone the elderly. Tiit was an 8th grade student at a rural school, his mother was a dairy farm worker. On Christmas Eve 1986, the boy took his own life. For the first time in the history of the Estonian judiciary, someone – in this case, the boy’s mother – was charged with driving another person to suicide.
After the film’s screening at the San Francisco Film Festival, a room full of lawyers argued about a fundamental question: does a person’s life belong to themselves or to the state? Against the backdrop of the Soviet era, opinions were divided. In the end, a compromise was reached – all parties were deemed responsible.
Gallery
