Poll Diaries: Freedom and eugenics at the dawn of a new empire
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What stays with you the most about Germany director Chris Kraus’ new film The Poll Diaries, presented in Competition at the Rome Film Festival, is without a doubt the striking location: a strange country house overlooking the beach on a remote natural reserve in Estonia.
The director of the multiple award-winning Four Minutes chose precisely this decadent and almost dream-like setting to depict the end of one era and the beginning of the modern age, at the crossroads between the German and Russian empires.
The story unfolds on the eve of WWI and centres on 14-year-old Oda (Paula Beer), who returns to her family house on the Baltic Sea, a region where Germans, Russians and Estonians live side by side in a delicate balance.
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