A scene from "The Temptation of St. Tony," Estonia's first entry in the Sundance Film Festival.

TALLINN — Estonian cinema has hit a milestone with the premiere of “The Temptation of St. Tony” at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 24.

It’s the first Estonian movie to premiere at America’s most important independent film festival. Selected from 1,022 other films, it now competes with another 14 international movies for the festival’s top prize.

The film was produced in cooperation with Sweden and Finland and is about the agony of a middle-aged “average Joe” manager of an office furniture company who suddenly starts to search his soul and questions the values of his life. The road leads him through many adventures but eventually the guy loses his job, family and sanity.

Big opportunity

Having already received an award at Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for the best script, Sundance could prove to be a career-maker for the film’s director Veiko Õunpuu.

Sundance is an annual event started in 1978 in state of Utah by the famous American actor Robert Redford to bring attention to American independent movies. The festival kicked off the career of many now famous filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino whose debut movie “Reservoir Dogs” became successful after premiering on at Sundance, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Rodrigez, Steven Soderbergh and Kevin Smith.

Õunpuu’s previous movie “Autumn Ball” was a major hit in Estonia in 2007 and won several prizes at several film festivals all over Europe, including the Orizzonti prize at the Venice Film Festival, grand prize at the Marrakech Festival, Best Director award at 9th Bratislava Film Festival, special jury prize at Estoril European Film Festival in Portugal, best director award at Thessaloniki Film Festival and many local awards.