Funeral Diaries

The daily bread of ministers of small congregations is not sermons in the church; it is constant work with the old and the dying. A holy man who has been removed from his friends and peers and suddenly transplanted into another culture is often lonely and broken himself. Three ministers have been invited from Estonia to serve the exile congregations in Toronto. By now, the main job of Jüri, Kalle and Mart is to bury the generation that fled Estonia in 1944. The documentary uses burials to talk about the disappearance of traditional funeral services and the profession of a clergyman. The everyday life of the three protagonists tells a bigger story of church, faith and a fading émigré identity. The main characters have a modern and bright outlook on life and while practising a past profession try to adopt to the ever-changing world where everything old and familiar slips through the fingers like handful of dust. (Estonian Film Institute)