In 2018, Madara Dislere feature film "Paradise '89" was released in Latvia, telling the story of the last USSR breaths from the point of view of a little girl, then this is a relatively similar story from our northern Estonian neighbors - "Hüvasti, USSR" or "Goodbye Soviet Union". So then. Johannes grows up without a father, his mother is a hippie, rather a punk, protesting against the war in Afghanistan and probably much more. The boy cannot grow up in such a society, so his mother sends him to his grandparents, who live in the closed military city of Leningrad-3, where they obtain uranium. After one of her mother's visits, Johannes breaks into the radioactive sea, as a result of which he is hospitalized and, due to a few more incidents, everyone is deported from Leningrad-3 and returns to Tallinn. Mom is kicked out of school due to trouble with the KGB, she can't get a job, but she manages to talk to the KGB that she can go to Finland to work as a cleaner. But alone, without Jojannes. And then it all begins.

Johannes is left alone in Tallinn, he is not seen at school because he grew up as Homo Sovieticus and is not national at all (he believes his father ir Lenin himself), although there are winds of freedom around him. At school, he befriends a Chechen brother and sister, of course, falls in love with a girl (because they actually survived together in the hospital when they were just born). Then an accident happens and Johannes is not allowed to befriend the Chechens. Everything changes when Johannes receives the first gifts from his mother, who earned big money in Finland. Now he has sneakers with lights, childhood toy crocodile Genu is now replaced by Soviet Ken - Gorby and the thin doll Barbie, the first bananas (which in the USSR you must eat with eyes closed), Dumle chocolates, all kinds of Chupa chups, a satellite dish that allows you to watch Johnson & Johnson commercials and similar things. But, of course, Johannes misses his mother, and he also dreams of living in the west, where Dumles falls from the sky. On the other hand, there is a Chechen girl he has fallen in love with and dreams of kissing.

In general, a simple film that does not push for patriotism tends to linger in nostalgic memories. I watched with interest, because the time before the nineties is also my memory of my first childhood. I remember driving a blue car with pedals. Of course, plastic and rubber toys that were the same for everyone. Also the first banana, from which I vomit all night and "abandoned" bananas after that for at least 20 years, until I forgave them. :) And who didn't think Johnson & Johnson was a superb shampoo that didn't bite ones eyes! After all, this was very nice movie because because everything was well known, but a little forgotten. I doubted about radioactivity in the see, but then I read this about Sillamäe city near Narva: Because of the lack of knowledge about radioactive radiation, during the processing of the uranium, problems with the wastes occurred. On the seacoast there was 12 million tons of waste, including the radioactive waste of uranium. Now this waste dump is safe, by virtue of the biggest environmental project in Estonia, which cost 312 millions kroons.

I was living there at that time, I have also Inkeri and estonian roots and maybe that is why I enjoyed the movie even more. I was very impressed about the mixing of languages and the warmth of the movie. Very correct style, clothes and humour. One of the best movies I have seen lately that sent me back to my childhood places. Nostalgia. And very real story.

Time travel to my childhood. Yes, I'm from Estonia and have worn red triangle in my school some years before things started to change. Thank you for bringing back those memories, childhood is childhood everywhere.