Yesterday afternoon, after the screening of In the Crosswind, the first feature film by young Estonian director Martti Helde, the Kosovel Hall audience had the pleasure of meeting the main actress, Laura Peterson. She explained to the moderator Toni Cahunek that the experience of static takes devoid of dialogues and shot mainly with a steadicam, was unusual. However, the silent takes were less arduous than adding her subsequently recorded voice. It was hard to balance between speech and silence and invest equal a mounts of verbosity and reticence. She went on to say that the crew watched each scene an indefinite number of times and thus the first viewing of the entire film, which took three and a half years in the making, wasn’t the ‘first’ at all, and that the static mise en scene helped her to distance herself from the film character (“This simply wasn’t me anymore.”). Chronicling the tragic destiny of Estonian nation in 1941, In the Crosswind is based on letters written by a teacher who served as an inspiration for the principal character Erna that had to be edited and somewhat fictionalised, since the teacher’s heirs prohibited the letters from being published in their entirety. 

Written by Andraž Jež

Photo Iztok Dimc

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