Audience award
by Elif T. Erisik
“How far beyond your mother do you hope to get?”
—Sheila Heti, Motherhood
All parents were children once — unlike kids, who can't already know what it's like to grow up in a world that's equal parts frightening and enticing. But how easily those parents forget the perpetual mixture of wonder and anxiety that propels their offspring toward a world that's just out of their reach... Estonian director Elisabeth Kužovnik’s 2025 15-minute drama Stiina attempts to bridge this emotional gap across the generational divide between a young single mother — the eponymous Stiina (Liisa Saaremäel) — and her nine-year-old daughter Emma (Säsil Pärn), who live in a social housing complex on the outskirts of a town.
The blue-haired and fiercely independent Stiina — who evokes Bria Vinaite's Halley from Sean Baker’s The Florida Project (2017) — babysits by day and bartends by night to make ends meet, often leaving Emma to her own devices. Over-preoccupied with financial concerns, Stiina fails to see how a local gang of teenage troublemakers has made a regular pastime out of violently bullying her daughter. The incessant harassment and the loneliness of constantly being home alone forces Emma into her shell. She has only an imaginary friend to keep her company: an unnamed blonde girl of her age (Lilli Vabrit) who screams and shouts what Emma can’t.
Emma’s private world comes crashing down when Stiina stumbles upon a blood trail leading to their apartment, and realises the severity of the bullying her daughter has had to endure. Through calculated yet effective emotional beats, Kužovnik’s film takes an empathetic look at mothers who — even with the best of intentions, and through no real fault of their own — end up failing their offspring.
In a moving finale (one this writer is not ashamed to say brought her to tears), the imaginary friend Emma has been running around with is revealed to be a younger version of Stiina, whom Emma has discovered through old home videos. Comparisons with Céline Sciamma's Petite Maman (2021) seem inevitable. But, for all such self-evident cinematic influences, Stiina stands on its own as a touching testament to the notion that every daughter’s coming-of-age channels a retelling of her mother’s story.
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