Oliver is a 12-year-old boy whose mother, Mari has stage IV cancer, and together they are preparing for her death. Mari tries to show Oliver how to fly around as a spirit, how to talk to her when she’s an angel in the sky or how they will play football together even after she has passed away. At the same time, Mari must fight for her daughter’s custody, to have a chance to see her before she dies. In the midst of it stands Oliver, whose main wish is that he could simply live happily forever together with his mother and sister.
WHO AM I SMILING FOR portrays a young boy dealing with the delicate matters of losing his mother to a fatal illness and the probability of losing his sister as well. This is a film about the love of a mother and her children - nothing can separate them, not even death.
film giffoni 2023
WHO AM I SMILING FOR?
| Original Title | Kellele Ma Naeratan? |
| Category | Official Competition |
| Section | GEx Doc |
| Tipology | Documentary, Feature Film |
| Duration | 61' |
| Production Year | 2023 |
| Nationality | Estonia |
| Directed by | Eeva Mägi |
| Screenplay | Eeva Mägi |
| Director of photography | Sten-Johann Lill |
| Editor | Kersti Miilen |
| Sound | Ranno Tiislar |
| Music | Tanel Kadalipp |
| Featuring |
Oliver Cypriano Mari Minn Urmas Minn Maie Minn Martin Minn |
| Produced by | Kristofer Piir, Dora Nedeczky |
| Production | Allfilm |
Eeva Mägi
Eeva Mägi was born in 1987. She is an Estonian writer-director based in Tallinn, who’s active in the field of fiction films and documentaries.
She graduated from Directing Documentaries at the Baltic Film and Media School in 2015. Since then, she has directed successful shorts as LEMBRI UUDU (2017) that had its premiere at DOK Leipzig and has later participated in many festivals such as PÖFF Shorts, Go Short, Sarajevo among others. Her hybrid doc THE WEIGHT OF ALL THE BEAUTY (2019) was longlisted to the Oscars after winning “Best Short Documentary” at Melbourne IFF, and her latest short WEDNESDAY (2022) is kicking off at the Norwegian Short Film Festival and Japan’s Short Shorts.
Eeva received the Young Filmmaker’s Award by the Estonian Cultural Endowment in 2018, then the DocPoint Tallinn Young Filmmaker Award in 2019. WHO AM I SMILING FOR (2022) is her first long-form documentary.
“Since I lost my father when I was 11, I’ve believed that death, most definitely, is not the end of life. This comprehension of an immortal life also helped me understand Mari when she contacted me in the fall of 2020 to tell her story. At that time Mari had not seen her daughter for eight months and she wanted to leave an audiovisual letter to her and her son, Oliver, a memory of their mother.
Though Oliver’s and Mari’s story is heart-wrenching and complex, with this documentary film I wish to convey the same beauty and lightness as was Mari’s dying wish to her children - no matter what, she will always be next to them. I believe there truly is a reason to smile every day and let the spirit fly around freely with the living and dead.”