Jaanika Arum graduated from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in 2014 as an actress, gaining extensive experience across film and theatre, including creating two solo performances. Driven by an interdisciplinary approach, she obtained a Master’s degree in Contemporary Art from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2020. She has collaborated with local and international artists on video installations, room installations, and performance art. Her filmmaking journey includes directing a short film “Skin Of A Mandarin”; in 2020, the project won the main award at the Baltic Pitching Forum. Currently, besides writing the script “Flourishing Desert”, she is finalizing the development of her debut feature film, “Beyond The Visible Flowers”, as it moves toward the production phase.
PROJECT
Flourishing Desert
Under summer heat, fragile young woman Liisu (19) is kept in a psychological prison by her mother, Angela (52), who is a beekeeper. Driven by unprocessed grief of losing her husband years ago, Angela’s obsessive control over nature and attempts to “protect” her daughter from the outside world is to avoid any future losses. Their lives start to change when new neighbours Jyri and Marii arrive. Jyri’s sand quarry investment faces ruin and his sanity starts to fracture. The neighborly tension explodes, when Angela plants wild flowers behind their fence culminating in a bee swarm invading their living room. As revenge, Jyri burns Angela’s beehives. From the ashes a strange and obsessive “friendship” starts between Angela and Marii pushing Liisu to finally understand the world outside. Jyri, who starts to see hallucinations from desperate attempts to save his business is the one who sees through delusion and helps Liisu out from her mother’s grip asking who in the modern world is truly sane.
