Half the film was shot with a video camera taken from a television station without permission, the cast and staff were unpaid, and the script was written as a screenwriting class assignment.

Killing Tartu

Over the course of 25 years Lennart Meri's life and creative works were closely linked with Estonian film production. "Dances for the Milky Way" follows Lennart Meri's film quests since 1964 when he was invited to work as an script editor for Tallinnfilm, where he would quite soon become the key person for planning Estonian-Finnish film co-operation. "Dances for the Milky Way" details the stories of the makings of Lennart Meri's anthropological documentaries on Finno-Ugric peoples, such as "The Waterfowl People" (1970), "The Winds of the Milky Way" (1977), "The Sounds of Kaleva" (1986), "The Sons of Torum" (1989) and "The Shaman" (1997). The film contains many photos of film expeditions, excerpts from TV and radio programmes with interviews of Lennart Meri, video footage from his personal camera, unused footage of Lennart Meri's films, correspondence, archive documents, etc. The film also touches the international documentary project "The Boat", which was never made because of the reluctant nature of the Soviet film's red tape, as well as some other uncompleted film ideas of his. Lennart Meri (1929-2006), a writer and a filmmaker, was elected twice the President of the Republic of Estonia, in 1992-2001.