Johnny

On Christmas Eve 1948, 19-year-old Lennart, whom his friends call Johnny, lands in the post-war ruins of the Tartu University old dormitory. He is tall, striking, educated and authoritative, studying history. Johnny is a copy of his intellectual father Georg, who has lived an exciting life in Europe before the war, in Paris, Berlin.

During the Second World War, the whole family was deported to Siberia.

Johnny is popular, studies well, does a term paper on the French Resistance during World War II, secretly listens to BBC news and reads Baudelaire in French at student merry poetry and dance evenings. He also speaks German, English and Russian. Russian he learned while deported to Siberia.

At the University Bolshevik pressure is growing. Intellectual professors are dismissed and replaced by semi-literates from Russia. But you have to know your enemy to betray him - Johnny is skilled at manipulating the university's communist teaching staff. In order to have free time to study the subjects that interest him, he cleverly passes exams in Communist Party history and Russian in advance.

To escape the new mass deportation of 1949, Johnny escapes with his friends into the ruins of a cemetery at night. Under conditions of increasing oppression, his father Georg devises a plan to escape to Sweden. The escape fails, his father is arrested and, luckily, Johnny receives only a serious warning from the university.

Nonetheless, there must be enlightened people in the fool's land we live in today, of course, hidden in the shadows and in secret, says Johnny’s new friend Juri Lotman, a young semiotician deported from Leningrad to Tartu. So, Johnny and his roommates in student dormitory found the enlightened people's secret association Black Hand, which aims to liberate Estonia. The boys plan to blow up radio jamming masts, the plan fails.
Fortunately Johnny escapes arrest. But the next provocative action, an ironic bourgeois duel show, where scores are settled with forks, proves to be extremely popular, gathering student masses in front of the University and putting the communists on the back foot. Boys are severely punished, some are expelled. Johnny only escapes thanks to the name of his uncle, who is a high-ranking Communist Party functionary.

Since the father is in jail, Johnny has to earn money for his family, so he works as a loader at the port, contributes to the local newspaper and gets a job as a literary manager at the Tartu Theatre.

Johnny meets Gina - Gina is an extraordinary girl, studying to be a doctor. She plays the piano and plays tennis, is beautiful and smart and loves to dance. Johnny would like her to be his wife, but he can't dance! Gina is reluctant, she thinks Johnny is arrogant and doesn't want to commit yet.

Stalin dies! In the midst of official mourning, Johnny considers it as a lucky strike! This is the best moment to propose to Gina. Now Gina agrees!

Father Georg is released from prison under an amnesty, but can't find a job. Johnny makes a deal with the Tartu theater director to build up a new wave theater. It is necessary to start with the classics – Shakespeare! And the best translator from English is his polyglot father Georg.

But the period is becoming more and more oppressive, freedom is increasingly reduced. Johnny lives in two worlds at once. One is friends, university, family, and the other is a dark world, where citizens are deported, spied on, arrested, executed. And both worlds are real. The sky over Estonia is darkening.

The Black Hand brothers receive graduation diplomas, Johnny cum laude, they embark on a life in which they do not intend to give up.