TIFF Review: Audacious 'In The Crosswind' Will Leave You Awestruck

First time features this audacious come once in a blue moon. Young director Martti Helde is still attending the Academy of Music and Theater in his native Estonia, but he found a subject so close to his heart that he realized it into a full-length theatrical feature through years of comprehensive research and preparation. “In The Crosswind” is immediately distinguishable from the ordinary motion picture by the use of painstakingly choreographed tableux vivants – literally, a “living picture” where the actors are motionless, ostensibly frozen in time, as the camera sashays around them. It’s an approach that’s a bit of a double-edged sword for ‘Crosswind’; certain moments will test your patience, but the total effect will leave you awe-struck in the literal sense of the word.

During the Second World War, when Hitler's Final Solution for the Jewish people was becoming public, Stalin had similar malevolent plans for people living in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Trains took...