Estonian Stories "GUMMI BEAR"

Maiko Ratner has an idée fixe – he wants to clean up the surroundings of his home village. This decision is made special by the location of his home – Ülgase. It means that the surroundings of his village is covered by one-tenth of the entire Estonia’s illegal waste, which means not just a bit of ice cream wrappings and cigarette butts, but thousands of tons of construction waste and old tyres. Ülgase is an ancient village nearby Tallinn, in the Rebala heritage protection area where phosphorite was excavated for nearly hundred years. The mines were closed and now the forests surrounding the village, the landscape protection area and the abandoned quarry have been the secret places for dumping waste. 

Maiko, a simple man, strong as a bear, is determined that he can empty the old quarry from the trash. Obviously, it is too big a task for one man and, what’s even worse, it is a real Sisyphean challenge – while Maiko is cleaning up one end of the quarry, new waste is dumped in the other end. Maiko also has a hobby, off-road racing, and other competitors have nicknamed him panda bear. The bear maintains peace and without hesitation puts his racing car into use for transporting away the waste. Other racing partners come to help him time and again. Thanks to the local government he can get some containers to take to dumping ground the waste that has been collected from the quarry and its surroundings, place the warning signs and close the roads to the quarry. Soon, Maiko finds that there is more reasonable use to the local government money, also friends have their own life to live and the village people share his feelings but won’t come to help so easily. That does not discourage Maiko, on the contrary, he gives up racing competitions and uses his car only for dragging out garbage and tyres from the quarry.  When nobody else cares, he’s the man to fix the problems! But how long can one continue solving that huge task just out of optimism?


Director and author: Indrek Simm