Before the winners of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival were announced, I spoke with filmmaker Eeva Mägi, whose Mo Papa would later receive a Special Jury Mention. Even without knowing the result, it was clear her film came from a place beyond craft — a place of intuition, emotional instinct, and an almost bodily understanding of storytelling.

Mägi works with fragments, impulses, and sensations rather than strict design. She speaks of filmmaking as a shared emotional current, shaped in deep collaboration with her actor Jarmo Reha and her DoP Sten-Johan Lill, and guided by the mythic frameworks of Joseph Campbell. The result is cinema that feels lived rather than constructed — a film that breathes.

What follows is a conversation where Mägi’s reflections deepen the quiet emotional power of Mo Papa.

MP: Let’s begin with Mo Papa. What moved you to tell a story this personal, this emotionally exposed?

EM: I didn’t aim for bravery — just honesty. Some stories grow so insistently inside you that eventually they need form. Mo Papa came from fragments: emotions, gestures, memories that wouldn’t rest. When something shapes you deeply, you try to understand it — and cinema becomes the safest distance from which to do that. It allowed me to look without flinching.

MP: Your filmmaking is known for its observational sensitivity. How did your documentary background shape this film?

EM: The documentary teaches you how to listen — not superficially, but with full attention. It trains you to notice the breath before the sentence, the tension in a room, the weight of a silence. When I moved into fiction, I carried that training with me. I didn’t want to polish reality — I wanted to honour it. Mo Papa is fiction, yes, but made with a documentary heart: patient, attentive, open to the unexpected.

MP: You’ve spoken about intuition being central to your process. How did intuition guide this film?

EM: Intuition led everything. I don’t begin with structure or theory — I begin with a feeling in my body. Something precognitive. I sense the rhythm before I know the story. With Mo Papa, intuition guided me to the moments that mattered: where to hold a shot, when to move, when to withdraw. And my collaborators trusted that instinctual drive. That trust was essential.

MP: Your collaboration with the actor and cinematographer feels particularly intimate on screen. How did you build that dynamic?

EM: We created an environment where vulnerability was safe. The actors weren’t performing; they were allowing themselves to be seen. And the DoP wasn’t merely capturing an image — she was entering the emotional space with them. We followed each other’s impulses. Sometimes the camera moved because the actor’s breath shifted. Sometimes an actor reacted because the camera lingered. It was a loop of presence and responsiveness. That is why the film breathes — because we were breathing together.

MP: Your films often explore bodily memory, grief, and the weight of unspoken emotion. Do you see Mo Papa as a continuation of these themes?

EM: Yes. All my films ask the same question: what do we carry without knowing it? Trauma, love, silence — they settle into the body. In earlier works, I approached these themes through form, through hybrid techniques. With Mo Papa I came closer to the source. It is more direct, more exposed, but still driven by the same pulse.

MP: How do you navigate working with such personal material while maintaining artistic distance?

EM: By remembering that film is not therapy. It’s art. The emotions are real, but the moment they become cinema, they belong to something larger than myself. I shape them, but I don’t unload them. That distance prevents the work from becoming self-serving. Cinema needs generosity, not confession.

MP: You mentioned being inspired by Joseph Campbell. How did his ideas inform your creative process?

EM: Campbell helped me understand that personal stories can hold archetypal weight. That what feels intimate can resonate universally. When I was shaping the film, his ideas reminded me to follow the emotional truth rather than a narrative formula. The mythic structure wasn’t a blueprint — it was a reminder that our private wounds often mirror collective ones.

MP: Tallinn feels like an emotional landscape in the film, not just a backdrop. How do you see the city?

EM: Tallinn is layered — historically, emotionally. I filmed it the way I experience it: comforting one moment, wounding the next. Not the postcard version, but the lived one. In Mo Papa, the city becomes another presence in the family — holding what the characters cannot say.

MP: And after Mo Papa, where is your intuition leading you next?

EM: To two projects: Mo Amor and Mo Hunt. Mo Amor continues the emotional movement of Mo Papa — not as a sequel, but as another chapter in exploring identity, love, and the echoes of self. Mo Hunt goes deeper into darkness: a ballerina, a surrogate, a man in a crisis of faith. It’s psychological, visceral. Both projects scare me in different ways. And that’s why I need to make them.

Speaking with Eeva Mägi reveals a filmmaker who trusts her instincts more than convention, who builds cinema from breath, silence, and emotional presence. Mo Papa may have received its Special Jury Mention after this interview, but its power was already evident — a film assembled from fragments of truth, shaped through intuitive collaboration, and grounded in a rare emotional intelligence.

(c) Image copyright: Erlend Štaub