Estonia The Baltic Tiger

Lesley Riddoch and filmmaker Charlie Stuart travelled to Estonia in late February 2020 to make a film about one of the most recent small north European states to become independent. Tiny Estonia (pop similar to Wales) sees itself as a forgotten Nordic nation, sharing its language, forest and bog-covered topography and Baltic location with Finland. And its widely regarded as Europe’s Digital Tiger economy, performing an incredible transformation from terrible poverty in the wake of reestablishing independence just 30 years ago. Obviously, there are big lessons for Scotland and the filmmaking duo were chuffed to get funding from lottery millionaire Chris Weir and the Scottish Independence Foundation that let them make a trip to capture Estonia’s Independence Day celebrations. Lockdown prevented the planned return trip in April 2020. But as so many others found lockdown proved the mother of invention and the film was finished using creative use of remote interviews.