The Snow Queen involved a lot of planning. Was there room for spontaneity making this film?

There was, but the more complicated environment you create the less chance there is for it. With “The Snow Queen” and the frozen interior, everything is locked, symbolically as well as physically, and that is the point, to create layers of an intimate story within a very cold, yet magical environment. We had very typical everyday lovers' dialogues but the environment is something bigger than life.

Filming inside a huge ice cream storage room. What were the technical challenges working in such an environment?

The cameras functioned more or less, as they are built to stand the cold. But the cold complicated everything because of the moisture from the breath of the crew. The cold and the wet together. With no wind inside the ice cream storage chamber the moisture stays inside which led to one camera breaking down, but the extreme conditions gave a strange mood for the actors and I hope it comes across in the film. This breath which you can't get without the cold. This magic was the point of the film. For me and the actors it was a unique experience and one which I will not repeat ever again. It's a fragile environment, changing all the time, you constantly have to renew it. The crew were living inside the fridge for 14 hour days, everything is demolished in this living atmosphere and has to constantly be recreated.

A portion of “The Snow Queen” was shot in Norway in 2009. With the last 4 months of snow in Estonia it could have been filmed here?

We did not expect such a winter here as this year. You can never trust the weather so we had to choose an area that even with a mild winter we could be sure of snow.

Will you get international distribution?

Hopefully. It depends on what happens, with some luck at a festival. Then it's much easier to distribute worldwide. We have one Italian based distribution company who have been interested all the time. But as you know, it depends on the festivals.

This film is about love and eternal cold and beauty. It's a kind of vampire mythology addressing eternal life and how to save the best feelings, using the cold. To freeze them. So it's an understandable, universal story. Theoretically it's possible it will be popular. I did a movie that I personally thought may be interesting for myself. Later we see what happens, it takes on its own life. Now honestly I don't want to see the movie or hear anything about it. The process I am more interested in has ended. I'm not part of it anymore, I can't change anything, it's now just a movie. As they say, the movie has vomited me out.

What kind of international response did you get for Knife and the Jaan Toomik documentary?

To be honest, not really much of one for Knife, there was already a slot problem, it's only an hour long, so they didn't count the movie as a full length feature. It was more or less a rehearsal for the next project. The Jaan Toomik documentary was almost 80 minutes long. And documentaries have their own festivals and distribution. Although it's not an easy topic for international audiences, it's mainly for the local public as the character is local. But we were at Docpoint, in Helsinki, and some other festivals. It's hard for an audience to take in a documentary about a small country even when featuring a reasonably well known artist. But that is what I do. For me these are important topics and stories. You don't think before, what will happen with them later? If you have luck, maybe some of them may get good feedback from outside Estonia.

What was your relationship like with Jaan Toomik and why did you choose him for a documentary piece.

It was many, many years ago when we first met at an exhibition in Austria where I was also showing some video work. While we spent time together I was somewhat intrigued by the things he said. He was 40 and said he was bored with the art world and it's rituals. At that point I started to think that it would be good to make a movie about him. About what one does when they are bored with this world, how will they move on, will they stop making art?…It was a good thematic starting point for a movie. And as a character and a person he is very sympathetic, and our taste is somehow similar. You don't get excited if the subject does not inspire you, and it was a two way thing with us. Even so, it was not easy at all with him. He is used to working alone, shooting his works by himself, and so he tries to control everything. With this he spoils for himself a lot of good moments and energy. So that was the main task for me. How to get closer to him somehow and get the kinds of emotions and moments from his life that maybe he himself has not recognized. I had plot points in my mind concerning why he is the way he is. During the shooting I said I wanted to shoot his video works as well. So it's a strange situation where I am making a doc. about him and he is making the video pieces with me as a cameraman filming him. Then everything is mixed up, but this kind of situation creates something uncontrollable in a good sense.

How does the movie making process compare with the documentary making process? You were making the Jaan Toomik piece at the same time as The Snow Queen?

Well the overall process is such a long one when it comes to features. I just can't sit around doing nothing. I always have many ideas. The Snow Queen began around 5 years ago, before I'd finished Knife. So I was working in parallel on Jaan Toomik. With documentaries it's especially wise to have enough time, so the character has options to change and to reflect on things in their life. The doc. was a process of more than 2 years following Jaan around. The main difference is the starting point. With a feature you have to prepare everything for the final stage and have a very clear picture in your mind. For a documentary you have to be keen on the character. You have some themes in your mind that you refer to and that you repeat to get the dramatic events you are looking for. I listen very carefully for the next hints that the subject may give. For a feature you can't be so open. There is a huge machine behind you. This makes it hard to make changes in the direction quickly. For a feature it is more a case of switching on and switching off the process, and then you are alone.

With a documentary you have to be ready to carry the character with you for many years. The doc characters don't stop, even after the movie is finished. I have learned to listen more during this project. You wait one second before you say something. More can happen than what you expect, if you are able to wait. There is a tension present that is very difficult and very beautiful, and some very rare moments where you understand that it's all worth it. It can be one glance or one second, after many days of shooting.

Regarding the film industry in Estonia, which has shrunk this year the number of new features to 4, what is the future for film makers here.

I don't know, it's hard to call it an industry, there were 7 or 8 features made in the best years and now only 4 or 5 this year. There should be a minimum amount of movies for an industry, but there is not, so every movie is a unique event, when a movie is ready it's an occasion. Our daily working crew was around 40 people, but of course with the final credits you are surprised how many people touched this process with their finger, there may be 500 people involved.

Were you optimistic about the future when Estonia received some recognition after the success of Sügisball in Venice and Magnus in Cannes?

It's just fate or fortune, there was acknowledgement some years ago, and now it takes time to get attention to this region again. As always it needs fresh talent, then there may be some movement. Now there is no industry here, there are just a few films.

I am optimistic that Estonia is a good place to shoot. Film crews are still full of enthusiasm, there is not such a strong and stupid compulsion to stick to the rules. You can make a deal with people using common sense, simple things like…maybe we shoot today for longer and then tomorrow we shoot not at all. I have some experience in England making a short movie, and it was quite hard. When lunchtime came everybody ran off, even during the shot. In a moment the room was empty. We had a similar situation in Norway. The crew have their working principles and their union. And while they would express how they would personally like to do more, they can't as the union does not allow this. It can be really hard then. Everyone knows filmmaking is a bit chaotic and that's why people usually are attracted to this area, otherwise take an 8 'til 5pm office job. Yes, there will be a very intensive month or two, but then you are off the next month or months. I understand in Hollywood where there is a real industry it's different. One film ends and another begins and you don't feel this process anymore as an event, with this atmosphere that is special. It's a paradox, if there is a lot of money and a lot of movies then this will be gone. There will be a queue for good crewmembers, actors, producers, cameramen. With more films it may change here.

The biggest problem, not only in the film industry, you have seen it elsewhere, is this small countries huge dependence on the reviews and approval coming from outside. The self-confidence of the local community is so small. Jaan Toomik said it very well, the tendency in Estonia is that of a servant culture, while you have an opinion, you wait till another country, (a big country) says their opinion first. It's everywhere in the world, but in small countries it's more noticeable. We wait for what the nobleman says first. I remember with Autumn Ball, the feedback in Estonia was very good and the movie performed strongly. This was only after the Venice award. And even on the DVD package there is one sentence from an Estonian critic how they can't believe this was made in Estonia. This low expectation is planted in the nations consciousness, a small countries problem.

“The Snow Queen”
Beautiful, cold and fatal

Marko Raat's film “The Snow Queen” is a wintry fairytale for adults. The unusual love story is based on the motifs of Hans Christian Andersen's well-known fairytale. A woman (Helena Merzin) living in an ice castle lures a boy (Artur Tedremägi, an acting student at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre) to her. He becomes so spellbound by the woman and her land of ice that he forgets the real world. The woman hides the secret of why she is living in the cold from the boy. The film is a romantic drama about budding love between two people. Those, who remember H.C. Andersen's fairytale, will also remember that only a few lines spoke of the relationship between the boy and the Snow Queen. The question remained unanswered: what did the boy and the Snow Queen do in the ice castle for all of the time that the girl spent looking for the lost boy? This film talks about what Andersen didn't. In “The Snow Queen”, the environment is extravagant and the relationships psychological and realistic.

The visually stunning story was mostly filmed in the storage freezer of an ice cream depot. A special interior was built, flooded with a lot of water and then frozen. Shooting took place in very extreme conditions with temperatures as cold as -20 degrees Celsius. When moving near the camera or icy walls, the crew had to wear respirators so that their warm breath wouldn't ruin the image quality. The walls of ice also became muted when people's breath froze onto them and had to be ironed to become lucid again. The exterior shooting was done on the other side of the polar circle, on the lovely, snowy slopes of northern Norway.

The film was made with support from the Estonian Film Foundation, the Estonian Cultural Endowment, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, the Norwegian Film Institute, FilmCamp (Norway) and the EU MEDIA Programme. It is an Estonian-Norwegian co-production (F Seitse OÜ; and Pomor Film ANS).

Marko Raat has made many successful films. His documentary “For Aesthetic Reasons” (1999) screened at over thirty film festivals and art exhibitions and won the Estonian Association of Film Journalists' prize for Best Film of the Year. His first feature film, “Agent Wild Duck” (2002), won the prizes for Best Film of the Year from the Estonian Association of Film Journalists' and the Estonian Cultural Endowment and for Best Debut from the Estonian National Culture Foundation. “Knife” (2007) received a Special Mention at the Deboshir Film Festival in St. Petersburg and the Estonian Cultural Endowment prize for Best Film. His documentary “Toomik's Movie” (2008) received a Special Mention at the Black Nights Film Festival and the National Culture Prize.

Official website: weather.ee/snowqueen

Technical info for “The Snow Queen”: 35mm, Fuji, CinemaScope (widescreen 1:2,35), color, Dolby SR, 95 minutes
Jasper - Artur Tedremägi, woman - Helena Merzin, Gunnar - Egon Nuter, witch - Toomas Suuman, cleaning woman - Anni Kreem, girl - Kertu Raja
Writer and director - Marko Raat, cinematographer - Marius Matzow Gulbrandsen (FNF, Nor), art designers - Jack van Domburg (Nor) and Eva Maria Gramakovski, composer - Sten Sheripov, costume designer - Aldo Järvsoo, producer - Kaie-Ene Rääk, stunt coordiantor - Enar Tarmo, make-up designer - Kaire Hendrikson