Photo by BFM
TALENT
gram founded by the American Film Academy, where every winner was given an opportunity to have an academy member as a mentor, sharing his or her work, and life experience, and introducing the work ings of the cinema world. My mentor was Waldemar Kalinowski, a produc er and a production designer who has worked on pro jects like Powder, Crazy Heart and The Fast and The Furious. There have been offers too, but it all takes time and deliberation. Right now, my main goal is not to stop, and keep working – not the easiest task during the pandemic. What do you think, why has My Dear Corpses done so well, and why does it touch the audience?
I don’t think it’s possible to say exactly why it has done so well. There is no formula for “success”. Objectively speaking, I think that there are several factors that in fluence the success of a film, and its connectivity with the audiences. Starting from the fact that it is a very simple story that has clearly been made with the viewer’s interests in mind. During development, we made an agreement with the crew that we will concentrate on the story and use the most simple means possible to tell it, but re main true to the sincere story and the characters. It certainly helped, and I think it eliminated a huge com mon problem today – in my opinion, people are concen trating too much on the aesthetics of the picture, in stead of the meaning, when telling the story visually. The other reason was the origin country, Estonia. We often hear that our country is small, and the
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ESTONIAN FILM
Director German Golub (on the left) working with actors RuubenJoosua Palu and Erki Laur on the set of My Dear Corpses.
oppor tunities are scarce, but it turned out to be strength, not a weakness. As the only film from Esto nia, we were received as something new and exotic. It is interesting for a foreign viewer to discover, how a little European country from the Eastern Block looks, lives and thinks. And the last reason would unfortunately be the complicated global situation with the pandemic and all. The film speaks about death and life, and the Cov id-19 crisis reminded people that we are not immortal, and that death is a natural part of life. Dealing with this topic in a tragicomic manner, sincerely and directly, gave us a way to approach the theme from a slightly different angle than usual.
