It's well known that you're active on many fronts at once, and since we're meeting just a few days before Midsummer, it's only fitting to ask: amidst everything you've got going on, will you be able to unplug for a moment during the holiday?

Everyone unplugs for Midsummer. It's really a matter of discipline, because you're only as busy as you make your life yourself.

What does your day-to-day look like right now? You've been an investor and entrepreneur for years, but how many of those companies and ventures require your daily involvement?

Right now, there are two small "enterprises" that demand daily attention — and they're the kids in the next room. In modern terms, I'm a hybrid stay-at-home dad and entrepreneur. Since Olga (my wife, Olga Temnikova – ed.) has to travel a lot from September through the end of July, I'm the one who gets the kids up in the morning, brushes their teeth, gets them dressed and takes them to kindergarten — and soon, to school as well. I work mostly from home, so there's little time wasted on unproductive small talk by the coffee machine.

The kids have actually been great for my famously strict sense of discipline. That applies to everything in life — if there's no plan, things fall apart. That goes for both your daily schedule and your business strategy.

So would you say your discipline is more in order now?

I really enjoy it. It's also a great excuse to turn things down — if there's something you don't want to do, you just blame it on the kids and say, "Sorry, I can't take on anything more right now."

You've never really been the type to focus on just one thing at a time, have you?

Yes, it's in my DNA — the curse of a curious person. Part of it comes from my family background: my mother was a dentist her whole life, but my father explored all sorts of paths. He's always had strong principles, but his fields of interest varied widely.

I'm also a classic example of someone who came of age in the 1990s. Back then, everyone was hustling: theater directors were trading sugar and homemade wine during the day and staging experimental theater at night. That early-'90s generation forms one of the cornerstones of Estonian society — whether they became bankers, IT visionaries, farmers or cultural figures. And what's important is that they all interacted with each other a great deal, which meant that, unlike today, they weren't locked into rigid principles.

So you think people today are too caught up in their own lanes?

Definitely. There's no longer a real need to hustle, because everything is just a phone call away. At the same time, there's a kind of mental laziness at play — it's so comfortable to stay in your own little tower. But that's when the false belief sets in that you're some kind of expert. In reality, you only become a true expert when you're aware of what's happening in other fields and how those developments impact what you do — and vice versa.

The root cause of xenophobia and populism is a lack of education. That doesn't mean people haven't gone to school — most Estonians have — but I do see that all this fear of outsiders, the inability to manage your own life and the tendency to blame others stems from a kind of personal laziness. It's easy to say someone else is always at fault, but in truth, more often than not, the one to blame is you.

Whether you're quoting Tammsaare or looking at it from an evolutionary point of view, the idea is the same: there's no way to get better except by putting in the work...

So in the end, everyone has to overcome their own laziness themselves?

Yeah, things don't work the way the internet makes it seem — like you just hook up some electrodes and suddenly you've got a six-pack. I've been working on mine for years and still haven't gotten any closer, but at least I feel better, and that's what counts.

Several of your ventures are tied to culture, whether it's the Sõprus Cinema or the new Kikumu Festival launching this year. Do you partially fund your cultural projects through your more profitable activities?

Of course — that's exactly why I work, so I can also support those other kinds of projects.

In that sense, I've been lucky: I've never had to grit my teeth and do work I hated just to make money. These days, I do my own thing, but I don't see any massive gaps in Estonia that aren't already being addressed by someone. The only real fight left is against mediocrity and the overall lack of education.

How do you fight against that?

That's exactly what I'm doing with Sõprus and Kikumu. If you think of money as the bricks of society, then culture is the mortar that holds them together. And when I say culture, I mean it in the broader sense — including things like identity.

It's vital for every nation to have a strong sense of self-awareness. And that self-awareness is high when others think well of you. Despite our small size, we've done a remarkably good job of making ourselves likable to the rest of the world — there's genuine interest in us. But that interest has definitely started to fade. Not because the world has moved on, but because it takes constant effort. It's like a sport. Being a nation, having a state — it's like a sport: once you've finished one competition, you have to prepare for the next. You won't get far on a single gold medal. People sometimes forget that.

So right now, we're not doing enough?

I'm not sure. It's probably also a matter of the times — we have very few narratives that truly bring people together. Ones that feel genuinely authentic.

At the same time, what's important is that thanks to our media and our language, we're fairly well protected from a lot of nonsense. That's why our society is, in many ways, far healthier than, say, American society.

But with the inevitability of technology has come a shift: the same people who used to rant behind the corner store can now do it in the media. And if a little Russian troll money gets thrown into the mix, suddenly it all seems bigger than life. We need to understand that nothing on the internet happens by chance. Algorithms are designed to make money — and once they get it, they amplify whatever content brings in engagement.

It was actually fascinating to watch how Russia is pushing its propaganda through TikTok. Their strategy is to show scantily clad Russian women. They know not everyone will respond positively, but their goal is to hook the disillusioned manosphere — the guys sitting in their rooms with smelly socks, listening to Andrew Tate, dreaming of romance while also wanting to hit women a little. That crowd, of course, eats it up.

I'm glad you brought up the manosphere. What's your take on it? At times it seems to me that this topic only really entered the consciousness of many people in Estonia thanks in part to the Netflix series "Adolescence."

That's an interesting point. I was just talking about this with a good friend of mine, the world-renowned cinematographer John Mathieson, who spends time in Estonia now and then. We agreed that if you've read even a few books or remember anything from required reading in school, there's actually nothing new about this topic. Maybe the clothing and behavior of these people have changed a bit, but the underlying patterns are the same. Sure, there are plenty who like to carry a metaphorical chip on their shoulder, but people like that usually ended up that way because they weren't invited to birthday parties or school dances. Humans are social beings — they want connection. If you look at these oddball guys pretending to be neo-Nazis, take away the symbols and they're just typical mischief-makers.

Unlike some officials tucked away in high-rise offices in the capital, I've spent enough time on factory floors and hanging out behind convenience stores to really understand how different people can be. Some folks just want to live in their own small world — and that's totally fine. Not everyone needs to be enraptured by high culture. But it's the job of cultural workers to care deeply about their field, because culture is about education, not just entertainment. Of course, both need to exist — a kid who goes to school also needs to play afterward — but the balance has to be right. The greatest crime is when you pass off the lowest form of entertainment as culture. That's where a critic or a patron needs to step in.

That's essentially what "Adolescence" was about too — it hit people with an uncomfortable truth. As a series, it wasn't particularly strong, but as a social phenomenon, it was definitely significant.

What's the balance like right now in Estonia between culture and entertainment? Is the focus leaning more toward one or the other?

One of the main issues right now is constant overproduction. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is grab my phone and scroll through the news — I don't even check what the weather is like outside. I immediately plug into the feed and don't disconnect until the evening.

That's why I'm so interested in the question of what we'll actually remember from this time when we look back in 2035. Right now, we have this "Rahamaa" phenomenon going on, but if you really want something substantial, I'd recommend reading Ron Chernow's "The House of Morgan" on the same subject. These kinds of phenomena are fascinating — sure, "Fränk" is a great film and "Rahamaa" probably is too — but will we remember them ten years from now? I seriously doubt it. But Veiko Õunpuu's "Autumn Ball"? That's something we'll still be watching.

So you think there's not much in Estonian culture right now that we'll still remember years from now?

It's still hard to say right now. One film that I think will definitely stand the test of time is "Pikad paberid" — Meel Paliale is like our generation's Richard Linklater. I wouldn't say there's a lack of interesting work, but I do miss certain things. I miss the kind of theater NO99 offered — it was really ahead of its time. And in literature, I miss early Kõomägi and even Kender.

Right now, we're in an era of scrambling — everyone's constantly busy, constantly producing. But in times like these, it's worth lifting your gaze a bit, looking past the crowd of busy heads to see what's actually going on. I've even fantasized about having internet-free days — just pulling the plug entirely...

We've talked about education and cultural richness in a spiritual or intellectual sense, but what about cultural richness in economic terms? Is there enough money in Estonian culture?

There's actually a tremendous amount of money in culture. For such a small population, the Ministry of Culture's budget is phenomenally large — we've managed to sustain our theaters and cultural institutions quite successfully. But I do think there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to efficiency. As the modern saying goes: less concrete, more culture.

Given that we're a nature-worshipping people who revere sacred groves and offering stones, theater buildings have also become a matter of national pride. But frankly, it's a bit outdated to keep worshiping these kinds of monuments. There's a tendency to over-fetishize the past.

Sometimes it starts to feel a bit like the Päts era again — everything "national" is in vogue and must be well-funded. But let's be honest: you're not going to sail very far in your traditional felt shoes and linen tunics. When we talk about what will endure in Estonian culture, it's the "migratory birds" in the best sense — those who take our culture abroad: people like Arvo Pärt, the Järvis and Maria Faust.

The problem with worshiping monuments — whether churches or other grand buildings — is that putting them up is easy, but maintaining them is expensive and demanding. I believe culture should also take a step toward embracing the digital society. In every other area, we're the most digital society in the world — why shouldn't we be in culture too? It would make everything more efficient.

Let's be honest: how many publicly funded buildings constructed in the last 20 years are truly international in terms of content? Even the Estonian National Museum isn't, though Kumu has done a really good job. But the key there was that they brought in a lot of young and exciting creators.

A lot of people probably know you through the Sõprus Cinema, which you've been involved with for years now. What's life like at Sõprus these days?

We're seeing very clearly that the younger generation is genuinely interested in real cinema — they're at that stage in life where they're curious about everything from James Dean to Quentin Tarantino.

At the same time, I've noticed that many of last year's most important films performed very poorly in Estonia. Why is that? You could chalk it up to fatigue, but I think it also ties back to the mental laziness I mentioned earlier. Plus, there are simply too many films being released — more than one a day, really. It's impossible to keep up with everything.

With cinema, you can't afford to become static. The moment you see the audience getting tired or losing interest, you have to roll up your sleeves and get to work. At Sõprus, we don't try to pass off as cinema everything but. Our goal is to make sure as many people as possible see the most important films being made in the world — not to cross-sell them products through aggressive marketing.

That said, this year we celebrated Sõprus' 70th birthday, and I still have a strong desire to really dress up this grand old lady. If the opportunities are there, we'd like to expand a bit too. We're working on special projects, doing summer screenings, and we're hoping to start showing films in Jäneda and Tapa as well.

A few years ago, you opened a Sõprus Cinema location in Noblessner, Tallinn. Has that investment paid off?

That was a very deliberate decision — to build a cinema outside the typical environment and encourage people to move around a bit. The same applies to the entire Kai Art Center. The easier option would have been to create something more like a trendy department store.

But we have to recognize that Tallinn is not, mentally speaking, an international city — not on the same level as Helsinki or Stockholm. When a Finn comes to Estonia, they go to Kumu or Fotografiska — they're not looking to spend their time in a shopping mall.

You've had several ideas for the original Sõprus Cinema in the Old Town as well. So when are we finally going to see a two-screen cinema there?

If it were up to me alone, we'd already be seeing it. My goal is to restore the cinema to its original function. First of all, I see real demand for it, and second, it would be important from the city's perspective as well.

Yes, earlier I criticized nostalgia and monument-worship, but a flagship cinema is a hallmark of any true metropolis. If we want to call ourselves a capital, we need to look the part.

It's also clear that the era of [dance] clubs (like Hollywood in the Sõprus Cinema building – ed.) is coming to an end. These days, people prefer partying in factory buildings rather than old palaces.

But is it fair to say that times and trends may change, yet you still won't be showing superhero movies at Sõprus?

If they're well made, then why not? They're still part of pop culture. I watch both Netflix and cinema — the key is balance. If something is technically very well done, then it doesn't really matter what genre it is. "Mission: Impossible," for example, is a good film. Maybe you don't like Tom Cruise, but it's undeniably well made.

That's the mark of a great artist — the ability to move fluidly between genres. You develop a sense for distinguishing what's mediocre from what's truly good. It's easy to throw on a beret and declare yourself a bohemian who would never watch a superhero movie, but I think if it's good enough for Steven Spielberg and Sam Raimi to make big films, then there's clearly something worthwhile there.

In a recent episode of "Kultuuristuudio. Arutelu," you spoke quite sharply about the monopolized state of Estonia's cinema market. But do you also see any positive trends in our film landscape?

Absolutely. The cinema infrastructure in Estonia is excellent, largely thanks to true film enthusiasts behind it. If we compare ourselves to Finland, for instance, I'd say we're doing significantly better in that regard.

But with Sõprus, we definitely don't see ourselves as competitors to Apollo — not even close. You can't fight market forces; businesses are bought, merged and sold all the time. Right now, yes, it's a monopoly, but tomorrow it could be owned by someone else. Who knows?

There's also that general rule: the harder you build a barrier, the more likely something else will push through somewhere else. Maybe the Esko brothers will come up with a new format that shakes things up. What I do firmly believe is that humans evolve slowly, and cinema will absolutely survive — because it captures people in a unique way. Try watching a film on your laptop in a brightly lit room versus sitting in a dark theater, completely immersed in another world — even with someone crunching popcorn next to you.

That said, right now there's a trend of turning cinemas into dining halls with giant TVs, which inevitably impacts what ends up on screen. But globally, the model of cinemas with dinner trays is already on the decline. We're in the periphery, where lounging and eating in cinemas still feels novel. Oddly enough, no one feels the need to have dinner trays or slurp drinks in the theater.

But I'm still optimistic: in the end, what's on the screen matters more than what's being served alongside it.

There are quite a few commercial movie theaters in Tallinn, but only two arthouse cinemas at the moment — Artis and Sõprus. Do you think there's room for a third?

No, I don't think it makes sense to open any entirely new cinemas in Tallinn. We've been fortunate — we already have a lot of excellent cinema halls.

We also have a very good cinema building sitting idle right now.

I think Kosmos simply fell behind the times. Sure, we look at it and see a beautiful building, but the urban landscape around it is like a wasteland — it honestly reminds me of early 1990s Detroit. It's a difficult area within the city, almost a non-place, and there's a kind of negative energy to it. I mean, just look at the "super ministry" next door! As we know from detergent ads, when something is labeled "super," it's often anything but.

That said, the area absolutely has potential — it just needs to be thoughtfully redeveloped.

We talked about how, compared to our neighboring countries, cinema attendance numbers here haven't bounced back. What do you think — will we ever return to pre-COVID audience levels?

To get there, we need to make good films. The level of Estonian cinema is really strong — just look at "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" and other recent works. But you can't break world records every year, because filmmaking is a long process. I always say: less is more. These days, it's technically much easier to make a film, which also means there's a lot more fluff slipping through.

Ene-Liis Semper put it really well: human abilities have limits — you're not going to jump a 20-meter distance and you're not going to become an artist in three years. The same goes for filmmaking. Unfortunately, the basic truth of life is that nothing comes without hard work. Maybe crypto gurus say otherwise — that you can just wiggle your toes and buy some bitcoin — but even behind that, there's serious work. Everything just takes time.

This summer, you're bringing together your various cultural interests at the inaugural Kikumu Festival, held at the Jäneda Training Center, which you bought some time ago. What made you feel that this was an investment worth making?

It's an architecturally significant building — one that's been recognized as one of the most important structures of the past 100 years. It seemed completely absurd to me that a country as wealthy as ours couldn't manage to make proper use of the Jäneda Training Center.

The second reason is that, since it was originally built as a school, it's actually a perfect space for exhibiting art. One thing we're really missing in Estonia is a "mini house-museum" format for post-independence art. I want to bring together all the people who've helped shape Estonia's cultural visibility over the past 30 years, and also combine different art forms. I'd love to eventually showcase Liisi Eesmaa's early work there, and include fashion and jewelry art as well. The idea is to create a kind of cultural showroom — a space where all of that can come together.

Are you planning to fully renovate the building?

I'm taking it step by step — my role is to create an opening. When we started with Sõprus, the goal was never just to build a cinema. That space became the launchpad for Tommy Cash's career — he had one of his first major performances there. It was also where Game Night began, which has since grown into a massive event. We were also the first to bring stand-up comedy from Pudel Bar onto a larger stage. In today's terms, we were an accelerator or an incubator.

So I definitely can't predict everything that could happen at Jäneda. Right now, it's more of an "open doors" phase — I want to see what connections people make. I'm not the creator; I'm more of a mischievous instigator, in the best sense of the word.

I'm not in a rush — we'll see what takes shape. I think that's the only right way to approach it. Sure, from a business plan perspective, it's totally reckless. You're "supposed" to know what your end result is. But in my view, the most brilliant things that have ever happened in the world didn't start with someone knowing point A and point B — they started with a spark and a leap into the unknown.

Another reason is that we couldn't create something like this in Tallinn — Tallinn comes with built-in limits. You're constantly worried about your audience, whether people will show up and so on. At Jäneda, the idea is to do it as affordably as possible, so there's no commercial pressure weighing it down.

With Kikumu, I've also looked at who's been buying tickets and engaging with it so far — and it's mostly people aged 35 and up. So I know that it'll bring together both older and younger generations. That's something I miss deeply on a broader scale. Estonia wasn't successful in the 1990s because everyone stayed in their own silos — there were no barriers. You could be a banker who became a theater director or vice versa. That's the spirit I want to bring back with Kikumu: a space where you can listen to jazz and also see what young punks are coming up with. The more you interact with different kinds of people, the more your worldview expands — and the more interesting your life becomes.

It was the same when we started developing Noblessner. At the time, it was still a pretty unknown area, but when we opened restaurants there, suddenly thousands of people were showing up — and Nublu even mentioned it in a song. We used to call it an EKRE-free zone. You had Nigerian taxi drivers working in Tallinn, Russian speakers from Lasnamäe, hipsters and Ferrari drivers from Viimsi all hanging out in the same space. We made a conscious choice not to put up fences — what you got instead was a promenade. That's the same idea I want to bring to Jäneda. It doesn't matter whether you show up on a bicycle or in a Ferrari — everyone should feel welcome. I know there's a real need for that, and I'm already seeing it in how people are responding to the festival.

Whether it's the Jäneda Training Center or the Kübassaare lighthouse on Saaremaa — which you've also purchased — it seems like your work is, in a way, pushing back against marginalization and decline in the periphery. So do you genuinely believe Jäneda could become a new cultural destination that people from Tallinn would want to visit?

It's not even really the periphery — but exciting things are born on the fringes. That's what makes it so interesting to me. It's also kind of my curse: I'm not a mainstream star, so my path is to sniff around on the edges, to discover new things and uncover the underdogs who might become stars in the future.

Let me draw a parallel with New York. Why is New York such a powerful city? It's not because of money or status — that's not the point. If you look at the early days of Jean-Michel Basquiat, he lived on one street corner and his patron lived on the opposite one. It's about contrast and the collision of different possibilities. Whether you're making art or building a startup, it doesn't matter — you need three things: a creator, infrastructure and an audience. All those parts have to be in place. That's why New York, thanks to its contrasts, is still one of the best cities to live in.

Compare that to Silicon Valley — it's clearly a global center of influence, but culturally, its contribution is zero — or even negative. Just look at some of these deranged tech oligarchs who think they're going to save the world with their ideas. Steve Jobs was an open-minded, educated person. But the tech "Hitlers" of today? They contribute nothing to culture.

We've talked a lot about the challenges and strengths of Estonian culture — but if you had to invest in one area of Estonian culture right now, where do you see the greatest growth potential?

Wow, that's a really tough question. I think one area with huge potential — and something truly worth exploring — is the fusion of new technologies with cultural creation. I don't even fully know what all the possibilities are yet, but the idea of a symbiosis between artificial and human intelligence is incredibly exciting. Also, how humans relate to materials — especially materials that are themselves becoming intelligent.

Estonia actually has a good starting point here. At our core, we're nature-worshippers — maausk people. For us, stones and trees are living beings. That worldview helps us intuitively grasp artificial intelligence a bit better, too. You could even say that AIs are a kind of modern kratt — mythical helpers with a will of their own.

To me, this is a field that hasn't yet been claimed or feared. Given the forces currently shaping the Krulli Quarter, maybe something will emerge there. And I'd love to see something born at Jäneda that could influence the direction of Estonian culture for the next 30 or 50 years. That's definitely a space where I'd like to be involved.

And on the flip side — do you have any cultural investments you look back on and think, that one maybe shouldn't have been made?

Not a single one — because in culture, it's impossible to truly feel disappointed. It's like learning the alphabet: you don't look back and regret learning the letter "Z" just because you don't use it very often. Everything is connected.

Even when something ends up in the red, in culture, two negatives can sometimes actually make a positive — that's not how it works in economics. So no, there's nothing I wish I hadn't done. I'm always more interested in what the next thing will be.

Supporting culture is also a kind of relay — you're handing over the baton. It's just like in business: first you have the angel investor, then a bigger investor comes along and eventually a strategic investor steps in. That's how we should think about culture too.

But I will say — I'm highly allergic to mediocrity. That's my biggest fear. I worry sometimes: what if I become mediocre?

So, you haven't become mediocre yet?

People are always worried about whether they're still relevant, just like BSH says. But you're only as relevant as what you're doing — relevance doesn't come from being on the cover of Kroonika.

So no, I definitely won't become mediocre — fortunately, that ship has sailed (laughs).

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