Coming to theatres next Friday, November 12: DISCO AND ATOMIC WAR
Jaak Kilmi’s sardonic story of growing up under Communism had its international premiere at Telluride last year and went on to have a successful festival run before heading to a theatrical release via Icarus Films next week.
In a very engaging and humorous fashion, Kilmi reveals that the Iron Curtain was brought down in large part by reruns of DALLAS and KNIGHT RIDER, illegally (and craftily) intercepted in Estonia from nearby Finnish TV broadcasts. Behind closed doors, families consumed Western media, more powerful than any propaganda that the USSR could feed them through their own boring TV programming. The result is a fresh and playful look at life during the Cold War.
Note: I briefly wrote about the film when it was part of SnagFilm’s SummerFest, including a link to an interview I conducted with the director for indieWIRE. See the earlier post here.
what (not) to doc 