Imbi PAJU

Imbi PAJU is an Estonian-born internationally acknowledged writer and film-maker. Her aim is to show through the psychological features of her works the dark side of humanity which is so often used as a tool by totalitarian societies. Her main message is love for human life, humanism and honouring life: do not give testimony against your close ones. She won international attention with the documentary film and book Memories Denied (2005), in which she told the story of her mother’s experiences in a Soviet slave labor camp, the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the attempts by totalitarian regimes to destroy human memory. The next documentary film Sisters across the Gulf of Finland (2009), which deals with terror and totalitarianism, is a story about how Estonian, Finnish and other Scandinavian women around the Baltic Sea worked together to prevent the onset of crisis and war their own unique actions. In 2009, Paju and Finnish writer Sofi Oksanen published a collection of essays entitled Fear Was Behind Everything. How Estonia Lost its History and How to Get it Back (WSOY). Paju is a specialist in the Baltics.