Movies: Ardo Ran Varres

It's the early 90's. A new currency is in circulation in Estonia - the kroon. The former federal republic has become a world leader in non-ferrous metal exports. There is a relentless struggle around this criminal business. It brings new victims ever...

Four children - Mari, Sadu, Olav and Anton form a secret society to play hide-and seek games invented by Mari's grandfather, a professor at the university. When the city is attacked by a mysterious poison which turns adults into children our gang emb...

A different history of the Cold War: how Estonians under Soviet tyranny began to feel the breeze of freedom when a group of anonymous dreamers successfully used improbable methods to capture the Finnish television signal, a window into Western popula...

The feature film based on Eduard Bornhöhe's story takes the viewer to the early days of the 20th century, when Estonia was still part of the tsarist Russia. Pride in one's nation was emerging and the desire to give something eternal to one's people a...

An outrageous road movie about The Old Man and his grandkids in a 24 hour race against time to stop a milky madman hell bent on killing his prized cow to save the world....

The young country of Estonia is dancing to the jazzy tune of the 1920's when on December 1, 1924, the capital Tallinn is overrun by members of the Comintern in an attempt to stage a Communist coup. The film follows the fates of a young soldier called...

A richly animated documentary about the extremely popular caricaturist Gori, whose fate in Estonia at the beginning of the last century shows the balance between power and freedom like a mirror. In the Fellini-like world of Gori (1894-1944), farce an...

The documentary gives us a look into a year in Estonian recent history, namely the year 2019, which brought us a schism in our politics and our generations. Where are we headed in this unbalanced world? Can we protect our land from our own controvers...

Mati, a 70-year-old bibliophile, cannot cope with his wife's death. As loneliness and indifference overrun his thoughts, he contemplates suicide until he meets a younger man who sparks his interest in life....

The main character, Helmi, is born into the house of Baron von Strandmann in Old-Town Tallinn, in 1908. The only thing that she knows for sure about her past is that her mother was an Estonian servant girl. Everything else is a discovery during a lif...

The Gold Spinners is a story about the birth, glory, and disappearance of a peculiar, invisible, and mighty business empire, the film studio Eesti Reklaamfilm, the only company producing commercials in the Soviet Union....

In the Kosovo War, human dignity was shattered by the terrors of the Serbian government and the Albanian liberation army. Truths about the victims’ fates faded away, which is why a Finnish forensic research group led by Helena Ranta got a mission to ...

An adventurous tragedy about Estonia's first film maker Johannes Pääsuke and his aspirations to travel around with a film camera and find happiness. Together with a good friend, Volter, Pääsuke will spend an incredible week in Setumaa....

The story of Estonia's first admiral and his era. Johan Pitka was a man who stood with uncompromising confidence at the pivotal events of the beginning of Estonian statehood, whether it was the formation of the Defense League, the armored trains in t...

Underwater Flights is comprised of ten film short stories that depict events occurring between 1820 and 1940. This was a time when clever men invented flying machines, submarines started traveling underwater, warships were built in Tallinn, bombs wer...

Karl and Carla is set in an ironic dystopia from the near future, where adult relationships and interactions are regulated and controlled by the government’s ‘Happiness Institute’....

A documentary exploring the difficulties the newly-independent Estonia faced in the early 1990s after emerging from decades of Soviet rule. The film focuses especially on then-32-year-old and inexperienced Mart Laar, who became country's prime minist...

A documentary on the volunteer Estonian Army's defense against the Soviet Army in 1944 with an emphasis on its last stand in the region known as the Blue Hills of Estonia....

After World War II, Estonian (Latvian and Lithuanian) soldiers, airmen and sailors who had fought (been conscripted) on the German side ended in POW camps on the US side. They were the lucky ones. The others went to Siberia. This story is about thos...

Juhan Liiv, a struggling poet and an unlikely detective, solves gruesome murder cases in Estonia, the Wild West of the crumbling Russian Empire in the 1890s. Investigations take him to miserable dwellings of the local Estonian peasants, luxurious cas...