A Finnish/Estonian co-production that tells the story of events in post world-war 2 Estonia, where a country that had been occupied by the Nazis was now occupied by the Russians instead, and where people's pasts could very easily be suddenly used against them. It's a paranoid time into which arrives a new schoolteacher who sets up a fencing club. Many of the kids are orphaned or just have a mother after the war and the soviet purges that have followed, so the activity becomes increasingly appealing to them. But the headmaster and the local political officer are increasingly against the club, and it seems inevitable the secrets of the schoolteacher's past are going to have to come out....
This is a film that has a little bit of cliche at the centre of it - the kids are a ragtag bunch who get inspired by their teacher, and there's elements of the sports movie in the climax as the schoolteacher take the kids to a tournament in Leningrad. But the reason cliches come back is because, if deployed correctly, they work. And they largely work in this - in particular, some of the kid actors are pretty damn good, I can't argue that this is amazing and unmissable, but it is a nice story nicely told.
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