Matsalu Nature Film Festival (Estonia)
A cinematic journey into the forest home of wild creatures — their dining room, their bedroom, their world.
The ethnographic film follows the gathering of firewood in a snowy tundra.
A portrait of a remarkable woman who lives alone in the remote part of Estonia, in Soomaa National Park. Every Spring, the area gets badly flooded for weeks at times, but still, she has no plans of leaving.
Vello followed an ancient call and settled on a swamp island, his neighbors became beavers, eagles and countless other species who have found a safe habitat in this cradle of nature.
The film depicts two different worlds - man made and natural - opposites both in terms of content and form.
Gulls are like soul-birds for mankind, living and building their nests throughout the city. A man sees hope for salvation in the bird. Human body turns into an artificial environment and the gull becomes his soul.
This richly shot film explores an ancient singing tradition in modern Estonia, weaving together people and nature through song.
Is the global environmental crisis concerning just our environment or is it also the crisis of our habits, expectations and values?
The Klamath River of Oregon and California is one of the most important salmon runs in the United States.
Estonian filmmakers with the director of the documentary, Riho Västrik, repeated Alexander Theodor von Middendorff's expedition to the less known areas in Siberia.
A band from Tartu, led by PhD students in biology, gives a concert in the biggest shopping mall in the capital to promote environmental-friendly way of living. The "eco-punks" as they call themselves in Estonian, propose that creative self-expression could well be a substitute for meaningless consumerism.
The basis for the dynamic community of the European Union is the harmonization of certain rules. This applies to preservation of nature as well, and thus we hear more and more about the mysterious Natura 2000. Natura 2000 is a Europe-wide network of nature preserves, consisting of bird preserves and nature preserves. A large part of the existing preserves in Estonia fit surprisingly easily into Natura 2000. The film shows the types of habitats in western Estonia, because it was here that the pilot project for Natura 2000 was launched. This land is many thousands of years younger than the inland – even now the earth’s crust is rising here and the land being born from the ocean – Terra Maritima – has a thousand faces. In addition to the coastline, the film introduces various types of meadows - all very valuable habitats.
Sometimes it is hard to make a difference who makes a better hunter - the one who takes from nature or who takes care of nature and animals.