NOVEMBER: Estonian Folklore

Virtual Tickets are $4.99 for 3 days of viewing. 

NOW AVAILABLE: https://november.vhx.tv/checkout/epsilon-spires-presents-november/purchase 

NOVEMBER (2017). Directed by RAINER SARNET, Winner of Best Cinematography Award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

A breathtaking dark fairytale about tender feelings in a brutal metaphysical environment, where ghosts roam free and people have to find their way through a chaotic jungle of co-existing and competing religious beliefs. The story takes place during the bygone feudal era in Estonia, when peasants had to earn their keep under the rule of the German landlords. Peasant girl Liina falls for a farmboy, Hans, but Hans is infatuated with the young baroness. This unrequited love causes Liina to run around wildly at night as a werewolf, to make his secret desires come true, Hans tries to employ a kratt – a fantastic being made of discarded household items and endowed with a soul by the devil, and the young baroness’ fate hangs by a thread when she spends her nights sleepwalking on the manor roof.

Adapted from Andrus Kivirahk’s novel, Rehepapp, with a visual concept based on Estonian photographer Johannes Pääsuke’s farmer photographs from the beginning of the 20th century, the film’s transfixing cinematography is reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal, and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. Shot in black and white and infrared on a menagerie of different cameras, lenses, and formats, both film and digital, with high-contrast lighting that makes even the human townsfolk look like specters in a dark, hostile world. Every frame of November stands alone as a haunting photograph, a reminder of a not-long-ago humanity riddled with conflicting superstition, the plague, and a more recognizable affliction: greed.