Hot Docs

Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival, this witty, charming, and provocative film recounts how Estonian engineers fabricating makeshift TV antennas, and rural farm girls updating townspeople on the plot developments on “Dallas”, led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain couldn’t stop the people of Estonia from rigging their Soviet-made televisions to pluck the forbidden cultural fruit broadcast by Finnish TV. Blending dramatic reconstructions with informative interviews and delightfully kitschy archival footage, Jaak Kilmi’s lighthearted film takes the shape of a political thriller as it depicts the incomparable role that the “soft power” of Western popular culture played in shaping the worldview of Soviet children. A totalitarian regime faced off against the temptations of popular culture—and lost.

Media Coverage

NOW Magazine (4-star Review), Eye Weekly (Capsule Review)