Photo by Erlend Štaub
IN FOCUS
The team of Where the Heart Is at the domestic premiere of the film.
chance to work with the heroes of your childhood, show me a producer who wouldn’t take advantage of that. We were lucky to have these people come and work with us. It was a big honour. Especially as many of them aren’t professional actors. It wasn’t easy to inspire them to want to undertake this journey again. You have produced many popular comedies – last year’s big hit was The Old Man Cartoon Movie, for example. What do you think is the key to good audience numbers and success?
Tanel: Well, we also had some mediocre achievements, but you don’t start working on a film unless you read it and believe in it yourself. It all starts with you. Of course, we compare films and results because we have to justify the funding. As we only operate with private capital, the system is ‘take it, but put it back’. We have a lot to consider, and we have to put a lot of emphasis on distribution and marketing. At the same time, we don’t have any definite formula for success. As we were writing the script for The Old Man Cartoon Movie, it kept getting more and more brutal. My vision was to rule out the outright cursing, because the film would speak for itself. But we didn’t censor any of the general madness.
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ESTONIAN FILM
If we’ d start producing to a formula, then the work would become numb and product-based. If we’d start producing to a formula, then the work would become numb and product-based. But it is important for us to get the best artistic result possible. Where the Heart Is had three producers – you two and Kristian Taska. What was the cooperation between the three of you like?
Tanel: We are all on set producers. When the paperwork and other stuff is done, we go to the set. We are literally hands-on. We are not office producers. Since our budgets are very small, we have to fill all the empty slots ourselves – from the art department to whatever else. And then we go back to the paperwork. By the way, I’ve noticed that you get a better sense for the project when you work like this – you know exactly what is coming, and you lack the fear and doubt
because you’ve done the hard work and can feel the film physically. Maybe your dedication and love, as well as respect, for your work is bigger that way too. Veiko: This style of working creates a camaraderie in the film crew, which is very important for a low budget film. What does Where the Heart Is have to say about Estonians to a foreign audience?
Tanel: I think it can be seen as a historical film. Most countries in Europe were occupied during World War II, just by different countries. This means the themes are familiar to many people and there aren’t so many distinctions in our histories, the central themes were the same. Veiko: The feedback we have gotten from the Eyewell representatives is that they see this as a clean beautiful love story taking place in a complicated context. Which is what it can be to foreign viewers. A foreign viewer does not have to see the previous trilogy behind the story and they won’t feel the nostalgia for the characters. It was funny – when we first sent the description to our Eyewell representative, he asked us if we were making a joke about Estonians, that the title of the film is Winter and the poster shows an idyllic summer landscape. Without background info, that might seem surprising.