Risttuules

After Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were incorporated into the Soviet Union, mass deportations of the native population took place. On 14 June 1941 at 3 a.m., the Soviet authorities began the deportation. Tens of thousands of people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were sent to Siberia, first in lorries, then in cattle wagons. Among them was Erna, a philosophy student and happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband, with her daughter and other women and children she travelled a long and tragic road to remote Siberian territories. There, humiliation, excruciating work, cold and hunger awaited them. She spent 15 years in Siberia. This riveting black-and-white, visually unusual film is based on letters, photographs, memoirs and interviews with witnesses of those events, the main inspiration coming from the diary of Erna, a young Estonian woman. (Festival information)