Margit Lillak

Biography

Documentary director Margit Lillak graduated from the Estonian Academy of Art as a set designer in 1999 and went to work as director of animated films at the Multifilm studio. In 2002, Margit graduated from the Royal Holloway College in England with a MA degree in screenwriting. After that she started her collaboration with studio Allfilm. She has directed several short documentaries out of which "Pastacas" was awarded with the main prize at the EstDocs Film Festival competition in Toronto. In 2012 she directed her first feature-length documentary "40+2 weeks" as a first-person film about her own pregnancy and home-birth. "The Circle" is her second feature-length film that follows a newly formed eco-community in Estonia starting from 2014 with blissful beginnings to their apocalyptic collapse in 2019. The film premiered at Ji.hlava IDFF 2019. It was also the opening film at Docpoint Tallinn in 2020, Then went to many international film festivals and screenings -DocPoint Helsinki, One World Human rights FF-l, Cineast festival in Luxembourg, Docaviv festival in Iisrael, Docs against Gravity, Millenium festival in Brussels, Artdoc festival in Riga and many special screening across Europe. The film gained a lot of attention in Estonian media and was popular with domestic audiences. The Circle and Margit received an annual prize for best documentary from the Estonian Cultural Endowment for extraordinary social depiction in a documentary. The Circle was nominated for best documentary at the Estonian Film and television awards.