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'On Weary Wings Go By' by Anu-Laura Tuttelberg: Trailer for the Porcelain Puppet Short Film (EXCLUSIVE)

Vassilis Kroustallis 05 August 2024

On Weary Wings Go animation film still collage with director Anu-Laura Tuttelberg

Estonian animation artist and director Anu-Laura Tuttelberg is one of the strong young forces of the always interesting Estonian animation scene. Her first (graduation) film, the mesmerizing 'Fly Mill' (watch it here), won 20 prizes in the festival world; A number of equally acclaimed indie animation films followed, such as 'On The Other Side Of The Woods' (2014), 'Winter in the Rainforest' (2019), which both solidified her style and let her transform at the same time her main characters. Mostly inquisitive women, full of wonder and adventures in all-encompassing nature.

Her latest, the 11-minute puppet animation film 'On Weary Wings Go By' (“Linnud läinud" in Estonian), is produced by Fork Film (Estonia), and ART SHOT (Lithuania), and will have its world premiere at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival (Pardi di Domani International Competition, 7-17 August 2024). It is self-described as a "stop-motion poem" and its trailer certainly reflects this statement.

We reached out to the director herself for further details about the film.

" 'Linnud läinud' [the Estonian title] is part of an Estonian proverb that refers to the arrival of autumn and the migrant birds leaving to the South for the winter season", Anu-Laura Tuttelberg explains. The proverb reflected the belief that the advent of winter can be predicted by the bird's migratory behavior ("When the storks fly away, they leave mean weather behind -and when the swans go, the snow follows"). The English title 'On Weary Wings Go By', taken from a 19th-century poem by English poet John Clare described a similar picture in the English countryside.

A wintery poem about Nordic nature. The sun moves low and days shorten. Birds fly South, porcelain animals and insects hide from the freezing wind and snow. Only a small porcelain girl wanders the abandoned landscape with no way out - Film Synopsis

Yet the story of making the film (which involved the crew spending 3 winters in 2 different countries, Estonia and Norway) goes even further back than its development time. 'On Weary Wings Go By' is only the second part of a trilogy that Anu-Laura Tuttelberg is currently preparing, the first of which was her 2019 film 'Winter in the Rainforest'(shot in the Mexican jungle) and the third film to follow will be about spring.

"Initially it was going to be one film that was going to include the contrasts of different climates and seasons of Mexico and Estonia", Anu-Laura Tuttelberg states. "But in time the idea expanded and I decided to make it into separate films about different seasons shot in contrasting climates. And they will all form a full circle of the year". She is adamant that nature itself is a "co-author" of her films ("Shooting outdoors means I have to listen to nature and sometimes follow its lead").

And what an adventure. The director narrates how the crew's lodging on the North coast of Estonia (the majority of the shooting took place in the winter of 2021/2022) meant abandoning modern amenities.

I had one team member with me going to the beach shooting and another team member who stayed in the house heating the ovens to keep the cottage warm and cooking for us. Our shooting days started by packing all the equipment and the puppets on sledges and dressing ourselves up with 4 layers of trousers and 5 layers of woolen sweaters and coats. By sunrise, we would arrive at the beach, decide about the location, set up the cameras and the puppets in the snow, and then I would start animating. I had to hurry as I only had time until the sunset. And the days are short in the winter... In November 2022 we spent 3 weeks in the North of Norway on Senja island during the arrival of polar night. I went there, especially for shooting how the sun moves very low on the horizon – the sunrise turning straight into the sunset - Anu-Laura Tuttelberg.

Cold was the biggest enemy here, and it could sometimes even stop the shooting. "The beach in the winter is very unpredictable. Every day I would decide about the possible shots I might make the next day based on the weather conditions. But arriving at the beach the next morning you might not even find a beach there! There were occasions when the seafront had eaten up the beach and stormy waves were meeting us instead. Then we had to give up animating and just shoot nature shots of the storm at the beach."

At the same time, particular mention should be made of the porcelain puppets, an element undeniably one of the most distinctive in her previous films, and promises to be so in 'On Weary Wings Go By' and the rest of the trilogy.

"I wished to make porcelain puppets for a long time [ever since the director's 'Fly Mill' film] but never found time for it as filmmaking took up all my time. So at one point, I decided I would have to make the porcelain puppets my film characters. That way I would join two interests and have a very inspiring material to work with in my films".

The director had already taken some advice back in the days of her studies from teachers at the Estonian Academy of Arts and its Ceramics Dept; she came back to them during the film's development, now their colleague (Anu-Laura Tuttelberg also teaches at EKA's Animation Dept). But she assures us this is not an easy task. "It took years of testing and making the puppets. Porcelain is surprisingly nice to work with when animating the puppets. The material never loses its perfect look. It doesn’t wear out or change in time. The only uncomfortable aspect is that it turns cold as ice in the cold temperature, and animating with bare fingers in the winter is just very, very cold".

An animated, no-dialogue film also needs its sound to play a fundamental role; music is composed by the Estonian Maarja Nuut (also the composer for Tuttelberg's previous 'Winter in the Rainforest'). "I know her music would fit my films. The beach where I shot the film was where we both spent our summers in childhood. I didn’t even have to describe the nature and the atmosphere to her. She could naturally create from her own experience".

'On Weary Wings Go By' is shot in the 'homey' 16mm format, which invoked parallels with the director's training in analog photography early in her studies. "For me, the film material is a means of expression. The film itself has a character, a texture a tonality of colors". Her need for diversity extends from her choice of material in puppets (wood, wet clay, porcelain, textiles are some of the materials she has used) to the film itself. "It gives depth to the environment. And it helps blend the porcelain puppets to nature with its 'imperfection' compared to the overly defined detailedness of contemporary digital cameras".

Anu-Laura Tuttelberg's films are not about specific ideas or "messages", but mostly about experiences. "My films are more about sharing my view to life and creating a film-world and sharing it with the audience than placing a very specific idea on the viewer". Her trilogy films in particular want to put our focus on this sometimes neglected (being glued to our computer screens) natural cycle of life, of which winter is the necessary thought and reflection break. "'On Weary Wings Go By' is about the inevitability of death in the winter. The plants and animals have to take a rest - to be able to be born again and start a new cycle of life in spring".

Yet, this is a film whose trailer invites a lot of readings -and its director wants to keep the life experiences of every viewer very open. And, like her characters, she's also curious about the film's reception at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival -having already traveled the terrain of animation festivals. "I am excited to see the reaction of a live-action film festival audience to my animated film! In Locarno, I hope to get interesting comments and interpretations of the film from the viewers".