The Days That Confused

A seemingly endless summer. Young people who drift along. Alcohol, sex, and party brawls. Triin Ru-umet's terrific debut THE DAYS THAT CONFUSED follows in the tradition of coming-of-age movies like George Lucas' AMERICAN GRAFFITI – only that the story is not set in 1950s California, but in rural Estonia in the late 1990s. This is a period the 28-year-old director has only experienced as a child. Instead of beer, there is vodka. Instead of rock 'n' roll, there is cheap techno music. And rather than going to college, the protagonists work at the sawmill or for the local mafia. Ruumet's film ad-dresses universal themes of being young as much as the specific time of transition in Estonia in the decade after the Berlin Wall came down. She obviously struck a nerve: in Estonia, THE DAYS THAT CONFUSED was one of the most successful films of the last twenty years. At this year's film festival in Karlovy Vary, this debut feature won the jury prize in the "East of the West" section.