"I keep saying that I read somewhere at the beginning of a book that 'Europe is from Tallinn to Lisbon," says Radu Sticlea. "I'm not sure what book it was, but if you can find it I highly recommend you letting me know," he smiles.

Sticlea is the head of BEAST International Film Festival, which, since 2017, has been held annually in the Portuguese city of Porto. Every year, BEAST's program includes a special selection of films from one Central or Eastern European country. In 2024, it was Estonia's turn.

The decision to spotlight Estonian cinema came two years earlier, when members of the BEAST team began discussing the idea with the Estonian Film Institute. "We have colleagues from Estonia working with us as well and they were pushing for it," Sticlea says.

By 2023, they were "living the discovery part of Estonia." "From going to the Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) in Tallinn, then to the sauna with some of our team members and," he smiles, "in a kind of barrel in the snow."

For Sticlea's colleague and BEAST artistic director Teresa Vieira, the research phase is one of the best parts of the entire process. "We discover completely new things, or things that sometimes even people from those countries either don't think is interesting or highlighted that much," she says.

Before arriving in Tallinn, Vieira tells me, they were pretty familiar with Estonian-produced animation, for instance. But it was only after they got here "and met people that are working with this type of stuff, we were actually able to get in touch with it," she says.

When researching any featured country, they always "go with certain impressions of what we know but then we try to also get to know other stuff that we're not aware of," Vieira says. Estonia's rich film archives also enabled them to discover material "some people didn't even remember existed."

"Our research really tries not to take anything for granted and just discover things – between ourselves and also with other people."

***

One thing Sticlea and Vieira definitely knew before they fully immersed themselves in Estonia, was how important sauna culture is here. And, thanks to Anna Hints' and Tushar Prakash's short film "Sauna Day" ("Sännipäiv"), they were also able to bring it to the fore at BEAST in their Estonia program.

"Sauna Day" is about "trying to get rid of this type of toxic masculinity, trying to get loose of the social expectations about the connections between men," Vieira explains.

"It's very specific, that type of ritual and the approach to the sauna," she says. "It's something very much about sharing and vulnerability. I don't think we have anything like sauna culture here in Portugal."

To create a similar connection between men, "you would probably need beer and a soccer game," she laughs. "But we do need more spaces for vulnerability and to be in touch with ourselves and our bodies. There's a big need for that here in Portugal. So, we should be learning a little bit more from sauna culture."  

What Hints' and Prakash's film did was "really put us inside the sauna in a way that I think is not that easily accessible," Vieira continues. "We have been fortunate enough to be able to go to an Estonian sauna, but it was in a more familiar context with our friend and our colleague. So, we did experience something – but not on that level."

"I think we had a certain image before going to Estonia," Sticlea chips in, adding that he's since noticed so many more art projects focusing on Estonian sauna culture. "But then, after you come back, you understand that there are some elements that are such a big part of a country's identity."  

***

Geographically, Porto is about as far away from Estonia as it's possible to get in Europe. For BEAST director Radu Sticlea, with that kind of physical and cultural distance involved, it can be challenging to curate a film program that both captures the essence of the showcased country and also resonates with Portuguese audiences.

However, while admitting that in previous years, he was "obsessing a lot" over where those points of cultural convergence were, now Sticlea's view has changed.

"For the festival, the less meeting points [the countries] have, the better," Sticlea says. "Because it's also interesting to know what these countries can learn from each other – what the differences are, and how can we just understand different cultures better so we can go [deeper] into our own."

But that's certainly not to say Estonian and Portugal have nothing in common.

"I think the connections come with the idea of [both] being a bit melancholic and 'pensativo' (contemplative)," Sticlea says. "I also think Estonia and Portugal can connect over both longing for something," he suggests, reasoning that are "both are by the sea."

"I definitely see this idea of longing being embedded in the culture."

***

Teresa Vieira also highlights that sense of longing, as well as a desire to get close to nature, as something fundamental to both Estonian and Portuguese cultures. Those themes shone through particularly strongly in "Wild South" ("Metsik Lõuna") a collection of short films made during Tartu's year as European Capital of Culture, which were also featured during BEAST's Estonia program.

"When we look at the films that were shot in Tartu for this project, you do see that there's a tendency to represent the country in different shapes and forms," Vieira says, adding that there was also a considerable focus on the unique aspects of the local communities who live there.

"Decentralization of content and how we can move away from the capital" was key to connecting Tartu and Porto at BEAST, Vieira explains. "Porto has a strong identity, and Tartu became stronger in its identity through being capital of culture," she says.

"A country is not just the capital, there are so many cities, so many particularities. The culture itself is different, the accents are different, and for us, it's really important to try to diversify the type of perspectives [being shown]."

The fact that some of the films in "Wild South" were created by Estonian directors, and others made by those from outside, only added to the richness of the project.

"It was a way of trying to see the views from Estonians, but then also people that just go there and do a residency," says Vieira. "What would they look at? What would they focus on? That's also what we do. I'm Portuguese, Radu [Sticlea] is Romanian. So, how do we look at what people are showing us?"

***

In 2024, when writing a series of articles for ERR News, I spoke to plenty of people about "arts of survival," the artistic concept behind Tartu's year in the spotlight as European Capital of Culture. Given BEAST's inclusion of "Wild South," which was listed as a part of Tartu 2024's broader European legacy, I was keen to know what all this might mean on the opposite end of the continent.

"We are kind of upset we didn't think of it first," laughs Radu Sticlea, when I ask him about the "arts of survival" concept, "because it really matches the energy of BEAST – it was always about survival."

"Every year is a struggle for us, individually, collectively and everything," Teresa Vieira adds. "So, to see something like 'arts of survival' really feels like someone got inside our minds and thought about how we feel about things in general."

"I think there's a generalized [sense of] despair, [in the world]," Vieira continues. "But, thanks to art, we're able to reflect on it, think about it, live it, maybe even more vividly. I think that's the whole point of art, to not let us run away from what we're feeling," she says, even if those feelings may sometimes be hard to process.

"I think that's the role of art. So, to see that slogan," she says, "Well, it feels very much like home."

***

With 2024 now behind us, and thoughts shifting to the ECoC's legacy. One of the big questions remaining is how exactly to measure it. Financial reports focusing on the number of tourists who spent the night in local hotels is certainly one way to do that, but talking to Radu Sticlea and Teresa Vieira, it's clear there's also other things to consider.

"The institutional friendships we've built with our partners, whether from Tallinn or from Tartu, are going to keep going," says Sticlea, adding that the Estonian films they featured at BEAST are also ready to be screened elsewhere.

"We prepare them with subtitles in two languages. We present them at our festival and then we have them ready for any kind of future collaborations, in Portugal, or abroad, even in Brazil," he explains.

"So, this becomes an archive of the country's content that can be exported again. That's one of the strongest tangible results we have from the festival. It is unique. It has our fingerprint on it."

"We had a big community from Estonia coming to Portugal," Vieira says, "and we're also hoping that the networks and discourses that happened here might eventually also help them in some way – to have new ideas and develop new projects."

I've also heard that there's also interest in Estonia to show some of the programs there. It's a curation coming from Portugal with [Estonian] films that are from the 60s or 2024, so it comes from a different perspective, and that's the beauty of film programming," she explains.

"I hope that Estonia also felt connected to Portugal, and this is a connection that feels alive and just continues and perpetuates in different ways, be it film programming, film production or just conversations between people," she says.

"You know," says Sticlea, as our conversation comes to an end, "it's beautiful that we're part of the legacy of Tartu 2024." Vieira smiles in agreement. –"'oh my God, yes!" she laughs.

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