‘Mo Papa’ Director on Her Unscripted Drama About Inescapable Trauma and Trusting “Divine Impulse”

Up-and-coming Estonian writer-director Eeva Mägi (Mo Mamma, Who Am I Smiling For?) is on Thursday world premiering her new feature film, Mo Papaan unscripted drama about the scars of childhood trauma and prison, kicking off the Critics’ Picks lineup at the 29th edition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) with a bold, raw, and emotional cinematic experience about trauma and our hopes of healing.

Mo Papa follows Eugen, 28, who has just been released from prison after serving 10 years for a tragic accident, in which he killed his younger brother. Haunted by a childhood “marked by abandonment and unresolved trauma,” he returns to a world that has moved on without him. His only social ties are his estranged father and two childhood friends he knows from an orphanage. Eugen looks for forgiveness and a second chance, but old wounds threaten to trap him in a cycle of self-destruction.

Starring Jarmo Reha, Ester Kuntu, Rednar Annus, and Paul Abiline, the PÖFF website promises “a deeply human story about the scars we carry, the people we push away, and the redemption we crave.”

Why did you want to put the spotlight on these social issues and characters, including the challenges they face?

I usually have an idea that I want to make into a film, but it takes time. It’s a long process, and at some point, it clicks in my head and everything comes together. I was a law student, but I wanted to become a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I worked in a psychiatric clinic as a caretaker when I was 21. And after three months, it was enough for me. I didn’t want to be a psychologist anymore because what I saw was so difficult. I saw so many children there, and even grown-ups, with this inherited cycle of trauma that you can’t escape. You’re born into a family where you are deprived of paternal care. You’ve been abandoned since the day you were born, and this just starts piling up.

So, I didn’t become a psychiatrist, but this experience had a very strong impact on me. I was writing a script for an experimental film. I was investigating an ancient Greek myth about Kronos and Uranos, this father-son story where the father kills his son. And then I also ended up reading a news article about a son who killed his father because of a poor upbringing. I was so curious about what happened there. And then, a boyfriend of my friend also had a very interesting past. His real father was killed because he was in the mafia, and then his stepfather, who was also a mafia guy, supported him and his mother. But the mother committed suicide because she couldn’t stand it.

All these things piled up, and somehow they clicked, and then I got a rejection for the experimental film, so it never got funded, and that ended up being the start of Mo Papa. I was sitting at a wine bar with a friend who is the main actor in the film, Jarmo. We started with the character of Eugen, and somehow it started unfolding from there.

There is a lot of raw emotion in the film that grabs you and doesn’t let you go any time soon. How much of Mo Papawhich translates as My Fatherdid you script, and how much did you improvise?

It’s totally unscripted. Well, when we were already shooting, I had some notes to remember thoughts that came into my head. But it’s totally unscripted, and we just drifted on the same wave of chaos. I like to call it “struggling through the chaos.” So we had the character of Eugen, and Jarmo lived in that character.

That may explain why I was torn between wanting to hug Eugen and being scared of him…

Jarmo is extremely talented. We started creating the character together, and then it was a process. First, we had his haircut done. It was an improvisation by a makeup designer. We first had an idea of ​​giving him a bald look, no hair at all. But then the makeup designer had an idea she wanted to try, because Jarmo had long hair at that time. She tried it and made this haircut, which we ended up using. It was perfect. Jarmo felt so much in character. And then there was the costume. He went to second-hand stores with the costume designer, and we created the costume. And then he lived with this haircut and was wearing the costume.

We also went to the Tallinn prison together and talked to people there, and they were very nice to us. We were afraid that this story was too grim and too dark, especially since he had killed his younger brother in a reckless accident because he wanted him to feel the same kind of abandonment he had felt all his life. But then the people in the prison said that it was totally a thing that would happen. They understood the story, and it seemed very realistic, and they even helped us to develop the story, including when you’re released, after 10 years, what do you actually go through, and how difficult is it to rehabilitate into society. You have no money, you have no parents, you have only this estranged father, and friends from the orphanage. So, you start building up your life again. You start from zero, you start to do these odd jobs. So, that’s what we did. We found these places where Eugen could do these odd jobs.

And Jarmo did those odd jobs as well?

He was actually living in his own apartment, where everything was cleaned out. It was completely empty. He just had a mattress, a water kettle, and an old-school phone with buttons, because as a former prisoner, you don’t have money to buy anything. And then he started doing these odd jobs, like shoveling snow and working for a funeral company and a moving company.

He was there working with real people, and they took him as Eugen. Our crew was so small when we were filming him doing these odd jobs that other people thought he was really Eugen. I remember we had a lunch break, and one guy asked Jarmo: “Eugen, how do you feel? Do you feel free of guilt now, or will you be carrying it until the end of your life?”

And it was a very interesting moment when I understood that this is what the viewer is hopefully interested in as well. So, the film was unscripted, and it unfolded in real life, and all these real-life situations also affected it. Then we started having more characters, because people asked him about his father and about his friends. So, I got in contact with the different actors, and they joined us, and they started developing their characters. It was all random, a very natural process.

The characters seem very complex and multidimensional. How did you get to that complexity?

If you let chance and life guide you or direct you, then it keeps on adding these layers. If you’re writing a script and have a certain character, you don’t even know all these layers. I think life and chance are super-good directors.

Was there any particularly difficult scene?

A lot of it was emotionally difficult because they all lived in their character. I think the most difficult one was a scene when they go to visit Riko (Paul) in a psychiatric clinic. Eugen (Jarmo) and Stina (Ester) tell him that everything’s going to be okay, and we’ll all go to Brazil. The actors were so in character. At the end of the scene, they’re waving, and then they walk downstairs. And the actors were just crying. They just couldn’t come out of it, because everything felt so realistic.

I also went downstairs to talk to them. And it was really, really difficult. And I felt that it was all on the edge and that I pulled the actors into this centrifuge of trauma that it was my responsibility now to help them come out of it.

That and several other scenes show the characters whistling certain melodies, seemingly as a way to deal with their struggles and connect with their friends. Was that part planned and “scripted”?

Well, we didn’t know that. It’s the magic of this method that you don’t have dialogue. Everything is unscripted, and you’re in the moment with the actors, and I’m guiding them behind the camera, and it’s very often that my head is completely empty. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, something happens. I call it the divine impulse. It’s not a chance. Chance is external, and we use chance a lot as well. But this divine impulse is internal, and everybody shares it and knows how to act, but you have to wait for it. You can’t force it. You have to go through the struggle, through the chaos. Then it suddenly comes. This divine impulse told me that they should whistle because this is the way the characters can calm down.

Do you consider Mo Papa as part of a trilogy? You made the 2023 movie Mo Mammaand I heard there is another film?

Yeah, they use the same approach, which emerged from Mo Mamma. It was also due to not getting funding, but I still wanted to make the film because this is my way of expression. Then, we did Mo Papaand then Mo Amor [which also stars Jarmo Reha and Ester Kuntu].

Theme-wise, they are totally different, and style-wise as well. I had an idea of ​​making a trilogy after Mo Mamma. I thought that a love story maybe somehow unites them all, but they ended up being totally different. So they are not connected, but they are made using the same unscripted method. We have very little money. It’s almost not a low-budget, but no-budget process. It’s unscripted with a very low budget, very small team, and just directing together with chance and life and waiting for this divine impulse to come.

We’ve been lucky that after shooting a film, we’ve been able to prove that it’s actually worthy of some budget. So for both films, for post-production, we have received some funding from the Cultural Endowment Fund.

Are you working on anything new?

For years, I was applying for money for a Werewolf project, but it got final rejection from the Estonian Film Institute this spring. So, again, I had another idea that I am doing instead.

It is called Mo Huntwhich is a story about three characters, but in the film we only show two. It’s a story of a burned-out ballerina who’s been feeling pain for a very, very long time since. She decides to go for an extreme and push it as far as he can. She decides to become an illegal surrogate for a lonely priest, so that for once, that pain might have a feeling. The film only covers four days with her boyfriend, who is a theater director. They go to an island to prepare for the conception of the child. As they are poor artists, they are doing it for money, but it’s also a divine act. The film only shows the four days before the conception of the child and what their relationship goes through. So, I guess it’s not a trilogy anymore, it’s more a movement. I don’t want to call it a method, because you can’t have a method to struggle through the chaos.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

As a director, I’m super thankful for the possibilities that life has guided me to, so that I can make films in a way I’m making them, and we don’t need big budgets and scripted st ories that are designed to perfection. It was Joseph Campbell who talked about the myth that is inside us, and we are able to dance to it, even if we don’t know the tune. It’s just more about trusting. It’s not only trusting yourself, but it’s trusting creativity and divine impulses. And it’s about creating art, films and stories that touch people and that are empathetic.