In the summer of 1941, Joseph Stalin had tens of thousands of people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania expelled from their homes. Men were sent to prison camps without trial, while women and children were deported to Siberia. The aim of this operation by the Soviet dictator was the “ethnic cleansing” of the Baltic states. Only a few were to return - one of them was the Estonian Erna Tamm, a happily married mother of a young daughter. Martti Herode's film follows her memories, written in letters and diary entries - and finds an incomparably impressive cinematic language for it: in minute-long plan sequences, the many small tableau vivant moments, in which the camera glides through the figures frozen as if in photographs, combine to form a large fresco of “living images”. Extremely artistic and, on the other hand, very touching, “In the Crosswind” succeeds in telling of the tearing down of an idyll and the tearing apart of a family. For Erna, time takes on a different dimension during the inhuman hardships. For the viewer, the illustrated contemporary history becomes unbelievably vivid, especially in its torpor. What an impressive journey through time and what a cinematic discovery worth embarking on.