Singing Revolution movie review

While I was in Eesti I was lucky enough to see the movie "Singing Revolution", a new documentary about the Estonian occupation and the independence movement of the late 80's and early 90's. The movie isn't only about singing, rather it uses singing and it's place in Estonian culture to tie together a number of different historical elements to tell the story of Estonian Re-independence.

The first thing that strikes you is the amazing production quality of the movie, this is a top rate Hollywood production that has interviews with most of the important players of that time and has some amazing archival footage that is rarely seen elsewhere. The directors do an amazing job of telling the story of how the Estonian people fought for independence with song and non-violent protest as well as some clever exploitation of Gorbachev's perestroika era to assert their freedom. The movie was able to show how independence didn't come easy for Estonia as there were many different thoughts on how best to achieve freedom and that internally the local activists had trouble agreeing on the best way to proceed. The footage from the 80's and 90's is amazing, I vaguely remember the events of that time but seeing it all put together in this film really helps put together what happened during those important years.

I guess the only small critique of the movie could be the glossing over of some events during the second world war as well as barely any mention of the struggle for freedom that was done outside of Eesti for 50 years by the Estonians who fled in the 40's. These are small issues and in no way diminish the wonderful movie. I strongly recommend that if you get a chance to see the movie that you do, you won't regret it. I believe that the film is having a screening in Toronto sometime in mid-October which I will gladly attend again. The trailer to the movie can be seen below.