Parent trap
Minu Kallis Ema (My Dear Mother) writer Raoul Suvi and director Doris Tääker speak to DQ about this Estonian drama, which uses a murder mystery to tell a story about addiction and abuse after a woman is accused of killing her mother.
When a dog walker discovers the brutally beaten body of a woman along a deserted stretch of beach, the victim’s daughter becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Yet the story in six-part drama Minu Kallis Ema (My Dear Mother) is more complicated than it appears, as investigators are forced to confront the question of whether drug addict Alina (played by Doris Tislar) is a cold-blooded killer or the lifelong victim of abuse.
An Estonian-Ukrainian coproduction from Zolba Productions and Film.UA, the series has its roots in a real newspaper article spotted by Elisa Estonia’s head of content Toomas Ili, who immediately sensed it had the making of a film or a TV series. He then passed it to screenwriter Raoul Suvi, who took just 10 minutes to agree. Suvi then found similar real-life stories and began to blend them to make the fictional tale told in My Dear Mother, which was subsequently commissioned by streamer Elisa.
According to its creators, the show is more than just a traditional police drama. The crime story serves as the “backbone” for a series that discusses topics such as addiction, abuse and dysfunctional families, with a complex mother-daughter dynamic at its heart.
“When I read these materials, I saw there was a very interesting story about this phenomenon of how institutions that should protect children actually work against that,” Suvi tells DQ. “The family is also a kind of institution [in the series]. We have expectations and we have roles. We have an expectation that the mother is always very protective of her child. But everything can actually be vice versa. For me, it’s not a crime story, but the crime is a very good backbone.”
The series also explores other institutions, such as Estonia’s legal system and the expectation it will always stand for justice, plus truth and subjectivity in the media.
“We are using these questions to create more interest towards this girl,” Suvi continues. “We have a journalist who tries to find out the truth and she also carries these questions. But most of the main evidence, we are revealing only to the audience, so the audience can assess how the court and all these other institutions actually work, and how precarious can everything be.”
The idea to end the show on the image of a newborn baby, as if the series has gone backwards, only serves to heighten the fact Alina was once just an innocent child, and that maybe her life could have turned out differently. “It’s very emotional,” the writer adds. “It gives very strong feelings. Because we see one girl, she has many layers, so we start to ask how it went that way.
“It’s very often that if you see a person in a hard situation, you think it’s also her fault. Maybe she also did some kind of bad thing or she maybe deserves it. But I hope that after seeing this TV series, maybe the audience will have more compassion towards people.”
After being sent the newspaper article in May 2023, Suvi began writing the series in October that year. Early drafts were sent to Ili and script developer Tiina Lokk for feedback, before Suvi would write new versions of the script. Then in March 2024, director Doris Tääker and producer Jevgeni Supin jumped into production.
“It was really hard work through the winter and Christmas. While everyone else had Christmas parties, I was reading about drugs and prostitutes and updating [the script] under the Christmas tree,” Suvi says. A consultant was also on hand to advise on Estonian law enforcement and provide information about drugs and prostitutes – subjects Suvi admits he knew nothing about.
“I felt that I had to climb a very high mountain, but it wasn’t actually that hard because we had these good consultants,” he says. “It was so interesting that the story just came out very fast. I was surprised that somehow I saw all these pictures and all these scenes at once. So I didn’t have obstacles [stopping me from writing].”
Tääker also pushed him for more information about the characters and their backstories – details that wouldn’t ever appear in the show but would better inform her and the actors’ performances.
“When Jevgeni called me with the script and the synopsis of the series, I had been home with the kids; my daughter was just two years old and I was in this weird sensitive bubble, a motherly bubble, where I just felt that the whole world was really cruel,” the director says. “When I read the script, my first answer was no, but then I understood that the mother-daughter relationship was something I could really relate to, especially being a mother myself.
“Then I read the article, and there is this very strong prejudice that comes when you just read it and go, ‘Well, drug addict.’ But what really drew me to this story is that we are opening up every layer of Alina, why she became who she is now and what were the biggest traumatic experiences she had that have basically collapsed her whole self-worth, self-esteem and everything, starting from the way the mother treats her. It’s such an interesting story to open up, and super controversial.”
The camerawork in the series blends traditional procedural sequences with dreamlike shots, close-ups of faces, hands and objects, and the use of drones to capture vehicles moving along roads and highways from overhead. The show also features flashbacks to reveal elements of Alina’s childhood.
Tääker says her directing style is always tuned to what the material needs, but on this occasion, she wanted to take on an intimate, subjective viewpoint to reflect Alina’s personal story. She also took care when it came to filming scenes featuring sexual violence, considering how much of those acts the viewer would see, and from whose perspective.
“We had quite a dilemma about how much we could really show,” she says. “And I understood that, in order to portray this story so the audience could really understand Alina’s personal life, we needed to be as realistic as possible. So we chose a very realistic style. The violent scenes are quite raw.”
Having previously worked with intimacy coordinators on international projects, Tääker made sure to create a strong bond with lead actor Tislar and ensure she felt as safe and comfortable as possible. In fact, Tislar was able to chose the actors she wanted to work with in some of those scenes, and was consulted on her character’s costumes and the amount of nudity involved.
“Then I worked very closely with a stunt coordinator [for those violent scenes], and he was constantly telling everyone that this is a dance, this is choreography, this a game,” the director remembers. “He choreographed everything to the detail and was also very conscious about the camera. There are a few choreographical elements that indicate there is sexual violence happening, but then the camera mostly stays on close-ups or sometimes even turns to the POV. That was the way we shot it.”
Suvi praises Tääker for the prep work she did before shooting began in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, which included meeting people in similar positions to Alina and speaking to psychotherapists. “For me, Doris is the best director in Estonia at working with actors, and it was just so pleasing for me to watch that,” he says. “They don’t know how much value Doris added to the text.”
“I really believe in backstories for characters,” says the director, who would have long discussions with the actors before and during the 25-day shoot. “I know that it is something that might not ever end up in the script or in the series, but it really helps the actors to get into the character. For instance, for Renata [Elina Reinold], the mother character, we invented a very long backstory going back to her parents, how their relationship was, how her father was part of the Communist Party and how she was high status. During the 90s, she lost her status. This is what triggered her narcissistic traits, and she started using her daughter as a tool for finances, desperately trying to reclaim her feeling of prestige.”
Following its world premiere among the Berlinale Series Selects at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, My Dear Mother will be screened at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November before its local release on Elisa Estonia, marking the streamer’s first ever international coproduction. Film.UA is handling international distribution.
“If you didn’t know that it’s based on true events, you would feel like it had to be invented,” says Tääker. “When I did all this research, it opened up a whole new world for me. I was in this weird, fragile state with my motherhood, but it felt weirdly therapeutic. The light of knowledge is something that really helps you get past the feeling of fear. The more you know, the fewer possibilities there are for yourself to be in this kind of situation.”
When he was writing the show, Suvi was struck by the power of the subject matter, and came to recognise My Dear Mother might be more than just a TV series. “What I really like is that it’s a kind of love story,” he says. “The policeman, Mart [Indrek Ojari], really sees that Alina doesn’t deserve that kind of life, that she deserves a better life, but he has not got the power to take her away, because she’s not part of his family or his lover.”
The writer adds: “This fight for justice, really seeing her as a human being, gives a strong human touch and makes it a kind of love story. Without this, the story would be very dark, but this gives light and hope. I really hope the audience feels the same.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Forbrydelsen (The Killing): The iconic Nordic noir drama follows a detective investigating a teenage girl’s murder, with a blend of crime procedural and deep character development.
The Outsider: This Stephen King adaptation explores themes of mental illness and obsession in the story of a father accused of a grisly murder and the detective struggling to solve the bizarre case.
Who Shot Otto Mueller?: An Estonian series that investigates the fallout from the death of a businessman on his 65th birthday, with each of his family members having motives for pulling the trigger.
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tagged in: Doris Tääker, Doris Tislar, Elina Reinold, Elisa, Elisa Estonia, Film UA, Indrek Ojari, Jevgeni Supin, Minu Kallis Ema, My Dear Mother, Raoul Suvi, Tiina Lokk, Toomas Ili, Zolba Productions