“Motherland” is a short film about Estonian Canadian Kaja Wichman’s journey to the Estonian Song Celebration in summer 2014.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, about 17,000 Estonians arrived in Canada. Currently, there are up to 50,000 people of Estonian descent living in “The Great White North”.
Twenty-five-year-old Kaja Wichman from Toronto is one of them. Her interest in the Estonian singing culture is not an exception – rather it is a characteristic example of how the Estonian language and culture is preserved and kept alive everywhere around the world, even by those who were born abroad and grew up in a culturally different environment.
Ukrainian American filmmaker Steve Zilberman made this short film, titled “Motherland”, about Kaja’s journey to the Estonian Song Celebration in summer 2014. “Motherland” was also submitted to the Toronto-based Estonian documentary film festival, EstDocs, and won the Audience Favourite Award in the short film category.
What’s the name of the song that opens the video? It’s charming.