The Temptation of St. Tony ( 2009 )

Living in the year of Our Lord 2026, we know all too well what happens when masks are removed and facades begin to collapse. Estonian director Veiko Õunpuu’s film The Temptation of St. Tony is not so much concerned with the examination of a collective condition, but rather with the awakening of the individual’s existential echo.

The protagonist, Tony (Taavi Eelmaa), begins to question his purpose and his relationship to the world around him, and the film’s internal dynamics soon begin to waver; the more one questions, doubts and attempts to understand the surrounding world, the more absurd and chaotic the answers become, until the world itself starts to resemble a Bergmanesque nightmare — a confrontation with guilt, personal morality and private terrors — a liminal space in which reality dissolves into endless uncertainty, feverish visions and hallucinations.

Age-old existential questions begin to weigh heavily and become embodied in humanity’s primal capacity to dismantle, dominate and destroy, while the film simultaneously asks: what ultimately is man’s place in the endless current of events, and what am I, and where do I belong in the midst of all this absurdity?

And yet… perhaps it is still worth doubting, questioning and asking, as Albert Camus once wrote: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”