The apple trees are in blossom. Boys from the top class of secondary school are on a military exercise in the school playground. During the break, the pupil Jaan and the teacher known as ‘policeman’ have a quarrel. The teacher loses his cool and knocks the boy to the ground. This event leads mass indignation and protests from the pupils. In a community in which relationships between people, even the most intimate, are subject to ideological censorship, even a cock-fight threatens public order and general welfare. The case is investigated and the dormitory town where the school is situated is shaken up like a wasps’ nest. Slowly but surely, the pupils realise that lasting resistance is impossible. The bald biology teacher Chlorophyll, who earlier managed to gain Jaan’s confidence, also makes a swing to the right and becomes the new headmaster.Despite the political undertones, The Sunny Kids is primarily an imaginative, symbolic fairy-tale filled with enchanting and alienating moments. Not without humour, Sillart sketches the micro-genesis of revolution and counter-revolution. He uses music, camera angles and absurd dialogues to characterise the poetic feeling of freedom and solidarity among the pupils. In the style of the film, it looks as if various Russian masters from the past are battling for precedence.Sillart himself about his film: ‘The film is set in the years between two periods. One era is not quite over yet, the new one has not quite begun yet. It’s an “interregnum”. It is the time when nobody waits for the Big Boat of Freedom any more.’
