Australian-Estonian filmmaker Anthony Noack’s short film The White Ship has been selected for the 40th Pärnu Film Festival in Estonia this October.
For a film that reaches back across almost 80 years of migration from Estonia to Australia, The White Ship now finds itself sailing in the other direction.
“I’m very excited to have the film screened in Pärnu and to be able to share it with an Estonian audience,” Anthony told HEIA.
The Pärnu Film Festival
The 40th Pärnu International Documentary and Science Film Festival (Pärnu Film Festival) will take place in Pärnu and on Estonian Television from 12–18 October 2026, before continuing at other locations around Estonia from 19–25 October. Award-winning documentaries will later be screened at the Estonian Art Museum in Tallinn and the Estonian National Museum in Tartu. This year, the festival has placed a special focus on Indigenous peoples and disappearing cultures.
The festival traces its beginnings to 1987, when writer and filmmaker — and later Estonian president — Lennart Meri proposed bringing filmmakers and ethnologists from both sides of the Iron Curtain together. Documentary filmmaker Mark Soosaar developed the idea into an international festival, originally focused on documenting disappearing Indigenous peoples and their cultural heritage. Today its program reaches considerably wider, while retaining an interest in folk arts, disappearing cultures and films exploring the future of young people.
One of the festival’s most distinctive traditions is its prizes: winners in several categories have gone home with Estonian ethnographic blankets and other traditional handicrafts. The festival’s two main prizes — the Grand Prize and the Estonian People’s Award, chosen by television viewers — are traditionally handwoven West Estonian wedding blankets. So yes — at this film festival, winning really can mean going home with a blanket.
🎬 The story behind The White Ship
The White Ship centres on internationally exhibited Estonian light and glass artist Mery Crystal Ra who took up a year-long residency high above Tallinn at the TV Tower. Inspired by Ra’s sculpture White Ship and her paintings, Anthony’s short documentary explores migration, creativity, memory and belonging.
What began as a film about an artist also became personal when Ra’s “White Ship” metaphor reminded Anthony of old photographs of the ship his grandparents took to Australia almost 80 years ago. As Anthony previously told HEIA:
“In the film the conversation with the artist unfolds into a meditation on home as her ‘White Ship’ metaphor evoked in my mind old photographs of the ship my Grandparents took to Australia almost 80 years ago.”
The result became, in Anthony’s words, “both about the artist and the story of Estonian/Australian migration”.
The White Ship had its world premiere at the Tallinn TV Tower in December 2025 as part of the celebrations surrounding Mery Crystal Ra’s Invisible exhibition. The film itself was also something of an Australian-Estonian community effort: its completion was supported through crowdfunding, with HEIA helping spread the word during the campaign.
Meet Anthony Noack
If Anthony Noack sounds familiar to HEIA readers, he should. The Melbourne-based filmmaker, writer and videographer works across film, arts and interviews, often exploring identity, culture and belonging — and HEIA readers have encountered his camera everywhere from Estonia’s Song Festival to interviews with international filmmakers at Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival.
For the record, we have previously tried to persuade Anthony to let us put a much longer list of his filmmaking achievements here. He keeps saying no. So we will simply point out that getting an independent film from an idea, through production and into an international film festival is no small feat — and leave the rest of the bragging to us.
Congratulations, Anthony! HEIA will be enthusiastically cheering for The White Ship in Pärnu. And should an Estonian People’s Award blanket somehow eventually find its way into your luggage, the excess baggage problem is entirely yours.
Watch The White Ship
The White Ship will screen at the 40th Pärnu International Documentary and Science Film Festival this October. If you’re in Estonia, keep an eye out for the festival program — and go watch one of our Australian-Estonian filmmakers shine.
Watch the trailer for The White Ship below.
Learn more
Pärnu Film Festival
The White Ship screens at the “Invisible” exhibition in Tallinn | HEIA
The White Ship sails with a little help from home | HEIA
Anthony’s website, Facebook and Instagram
More films and interviews by Anthony Noack
Video: Piip ja Tuut in conversation with filmmaker Anthony Noack | HEIA
PÖFF: Anthony Noack interviews two American filmmakers | HEIA
Interview with Julia Masli – award winning clown from Estonia | HEIA
When an Australian Estonian follows the dream home | HEIA
Laulupidu in 60 seconds, Day I magic caught on camera | HEIA
