HS-02. The Fencer

Finland, 99 min., Feature Narrative

Based on the life of legendary Estonian fencing master Endel Nelis, this beautiful movie follows his escape from Stalin’s secret police in the 1950s and finds him teaching small-town children in a remote Estonian coastal village, only to realize that this is exactly what he wants to do in life. The young Nelis founds a program for aspiring young swordsmen that still thrives today, but he immediately earns the envy and anger of a local school principal who starts investigating Nelis? background under a cloud of suspicion and paranoia fostered by the postwar Soviet occupation.