‘The Fencer‘ (in original ‘Miekkailija‘ made in 2015) is, I think, the first Estonian movie I’ve ever seen. It would probably be more correct to write that it’s a movie made in Estonia and about Estonia, but it is actually a European co-production, and the director Klaus Härö and the screenwriter Anna Heinämaa are both Finns. The subject of the film, whose action takes place in 1952-53 in the Baltic country that became a Soviet republic, will sound familiar to all those who lived in the half of Europe that fell under Soviet occupation after World War II. It is a story that describes a less common form of resistance against the Stalinist occupation and dictatorship – resistance through sport.
The beginning, excellently filmed, introduces us to the hero of the film, Endel Nelis (Märt Avandi), a sports teacher who arrived in an obscure village in Estonia to take up his post in the school run by a bureaucrat who aims to also be a political commissar. The story is based upon the biography of a real historical character. Nelis was in fact a fugitive, who had unintentionally become an enemy of the Soviet system because he had been forced to enlist in the Estonian army allied with the Nazis during World War II. The teacher, apparently reluctantly, gets involved in the lives of his pupils and transforms them, setting up a fencing school that becomes an open window to the alternative of another horizon, different from the grey and boring life in an ideology-dominated childhood. The opportunity of participating in a national competition will be the turning point, on the one hand giving children a unique experience, on the other hand exposing the hero to the danger of being discovered and deported to the Gulag.
‘The Fencer‘ combines several cinematic genres: sports film, the theme of teachers that inspire and change their students’ lives, and of course the political genre. I liked the realistic approach and attention to detail, which are of great importance here; for example, the image of the village with its politicised poverty, or the alternation of the Estonian language spoken in the daily life with the Russian language of the occupiers. Actors who play the roles of adults play discreetly, their silences being more important than the words. The children’s interpretation is also excellent, the spark in their eyes, the passion with which they engage in the sport that changes their lives, validating the motivations of the idealistic decisions of the main hero. All these details give quality to the film and compensate for the schematic story and the too slow cinematic style, making ‘The Fencer’ a film worth looking for and seeing. In short, we can say that this is an optimistic film, which could fall into the category of ‘feel good’ movies if it did not take place in a gloomy world and in such a dark period.