Traitor (Reetur)

Origin and Year: Estonia, 2019	Director: Ergo Kuld
Runnning time: 2 x 54 min

“Let’s be honest. You do not belong to state structures,” one of the two main heroes of the Traitor series learns in the opening scene, as he is being deprived of a high position with the police. But soon he rises even higher on the career ladder. While the Estonian series The Bank, the winner of the Serial Killer festival’s special award in 2018, showed a wild party in the 90s, which sometimes took place directly in the buildings of banks and savings banks, The Traitor shows more sober times. In the zero years, ambitious types with a sense of creative interpretation of the laws shifted to ministries, and the series shows them fortified in their positions in darkened offices with quality furniture. The elegant spy thriller about bureaucracy and the motivation to rise at all costs is inspired by real incidents between Russian and Estonian secret services that took place at the time Estonia became a member of the NATO. It follows the cat and mouse game between a high-ranking official and a regular intelligence officer, and confirms that Estonia is keeping up with the most distinctive trends in European quality series production and is consistently following political topics in its series.