Grigori Kromanov’s 1979 science-fiction film Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel will be screened this February in the Berlinale Classics programme of the Berlin International Film Festival. It is only the second Estonian film ever selected for the festival’s prestigious archival strand.
The film will be shown on 13 February as part of the 76th Berlinale, which opens on 12 February. Actor Lembit Peterson, who played Simonet, and composer Sven Grünberg, whose score is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive in Estonian cinema, will attend the screening. Last year, the only other Estonian film to feature in Berlinale Classics was Smile at Last (1985), directed by Leida Laius and Arvo Iho, following a major digital restoration.
“Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel” trailer.
Based on the novel of the same name by science-fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel blends detective fiction with speculative philosophy. The story follows Inspector Peter Glebsky, who arrives at a remote Alpine hotel after receiving an anonymous letter. When an avalanche cuts the hotel off from the outside world and a guest is found dead, a seemingly conventional murder investigation gives way to increasingly unsettling discoveries involving identity, death and non-human life.
Built like a real hotel
The film’s atmosphere is reinforced by a production approach that combined location shooting with carefully constructed studio sets. Interior scenes were filmed in Tallinn, inside a newly completed Dynamo tennis hall, where filmmakers constructed a multi-storey hotel complex complete with staircases, corridors and an inner courtyard. Hundreds of metres of stairways were built for the shoot.
Exterior scenes were filmed in the Tian Shan mountains in Kazakhstan, near the Shymbulak ski resort, around 25 kilometres southeast of Almaty, then the capital of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. For panoramic shots, an entire hotel structure was constructed in the mountains using timber transported from Estonia. The building was assembled on site and, according to production designer Tõnu Virve, later repurposed by local mountain services as an observation centre.
For panoramic shots of “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel”, an entire hotel structure was constructed in the mountains using timber transported from Estonia.
Artificial snow was created using cotton wool and several tonnes of salt, while icicles were manufactured in glassworks. The film’s mountain backdrops were, in part, handmade from silver paper. Cinematographer Jüri Sillart later remarked that the artificial mountains worked better on screen than real ones.
The production involved several hundred crew members and far exceeded its original budget of 500,000 roubles – roughly equivalent to around $800,000 at the official Soviet exchange rate of the late 1970s – largely due to the ambitious set design. Despite fears that costs might derail the project, Moscow film officials ultimately approved additional funding after reviewing the finished work. The film was later sold to 28 countries across Africa, Asia and Europe, including Japan, France and East Germany.
Made under scrutiny
Like all films produced in the Soviet system, Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel passed through multiple layers of approval. Archival records show that Tallinnfilm’s artistic council debated the project at length during its development, reviewing the script, production design, costumes and casting. Early discussions reveal concerns about tone, performance and whether the film’s philosophical themes would translate to the screen.
A still from “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel”. Photo: the Estonian Film Institute.
Kromanov described the film at the time as a work that moved “from science-fiction literature into science-fiction cinema”, but whose core lay in moral questions rather than spectacle. Despite scepticism from some quarters, the artistic council ultimately awarded the completed film a first-category rating in May 1979, indicating that it was considered a successful production.
By 1980, Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel had attracted 17.5 million cinema-goers across the Soviet Union, including more than 44,000 viewers in Estonia. Its restrained visual style, philosophical ambiguity and Grünberg’s electronic-inflected score distinguished it from more effects-driven science fiction of the era.
Sven Grünberg’s score for “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel” is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive in Estonian cinema.
Newly digitised
The film has been newly digitised by the Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia. The Berlinale screening will present a freshly restored version prepared by the US distributor Deaf Crocodile, marking the first time this restoration has been shown to the public.
This year’s Berlinale Classics programme includes ten films from nine countries, spanning nearly a century of cinema history. The Berlin International Film Festival runs until 22 February.
