A fast-paced, darkly comic take on grief and guilt, Morten Tšinakov & Lucija Mrzljak’s Eeva (2022) — shortlisted for the Oscars in 2023 — is now available online.
The latest offering from the award-winning Estonian duo opens at a funeral. It’s a miserably rainy day. A grieving woman — who may or may not have nudged fate along — and a quartet of everymen head to a post-funeral reception at a local restaurant. Booze flows. Music plays. Tables are turned. Glasses are smashed. Fish get drunk. A woodpecker appears, who is possibly the deceased, reincarnated and unimpressed. Nervous breakdowns follow.
As you’d expect from an Estonian animation, there’s plenty of deranged, deadpan absurdity. Eeva is a surreal send-up of grief, guilt, and the way death has a habit of crashing the party, even if it has to return as a bird.
Tšinakov studied animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where he made two films. After his studies, he joined Eesti Joonisfilm, where he directed three films alongside Mrzljak: Demonstration of Brilliance in Four Acts (2017), The Stork (2020), and Eeva.
Mrzljak is a Croatian animation director and illustrator based in Tallinn, Estonia. She earned her MA in animation in 2016 and has since co-directed three shorts with Tšinakov. In 2019, she also directed the music video “The Closing Door” for Glen Hansard. A freelance illustrator, Lucija has also published children’s books and teaches animation at the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts.
Eeva was co-produced by Eesti Joonisfilm (Estonia) and Adriatic Animation (Croatia).
