Rupi is a young miner who hopes to scrape together enough money to forever shake the dust from his feet. But the work has come to a halt because Rupi’s reindeer-herder father refuses to sell his land. What’s more, the mine owner (nicknamed “the Fisherman”) has his eye on Rupi’s friend’s wife Riitta, who Rupi is also secretly in love with. And everything begins in the same place it ended.

A series of failures of love and capitalism, unfolding like a long-held Aki Kaurismaki dream of a Nordic western set in Lapland. Veiko Õunpuu (The Temptation of St. Tony, 2009), one of Estonia’s most internationally successful directors, has created a compelling love-polygon that wades aimlessly through the frozen tundra. In the realism of the Arctic Circle, the lives of the characters are momentarily distracted and then drawn in by the local tavern singer’s cover versions of songs by John Lennon and other classics. “The Last Ones” has won several awards, including Best Baltic Feature Film at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and it was Estonia’s entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.