Adapting novels, folklore, and spiritual self-help with irony and unmistakable flair, Rainer Sarnet is a filmmaker in constant pursuit of new cinematic formulas—modernizations, horror, even kung-fu monks. Always stranger than expected, always utterly absorbing.
One of the most common critiques aimed at directors deemed “auteurs” is that they get too comfortable—recycling the same stories, the same tones, the same obsessions. Sarnet belongs to that rare air of truly unpredictable auteurs, always chasing something new. This could’ve been clear even before his directing career began: Sarnet spent a year working in animation before pivoting to live action film.
Once at the helm of his own projects, Sarnet gradually built a loyal audience in his native Estonia, breaking onto the international scene with The Idiot (2011)—a modern-day adaptation of Dostoevsky’s novel. Tackling the Russian author in a 21st-century context makes perfect sense for Sarnet, who’s described himself as guided by faith, though his films suggest that this spiritual compass is anything but dogmatic or heavy-handed.
His breakthrough came in 2016 with November, an Estonian answer to The Witch (dir. Robert Eggers, 2015), centered around the folkloric creature Kratt—a proto-AI golem with demonic flair. But November is far from your typical folk horror: shot in bewitching black and white, starring mostly amateur actors, and laced with a bizarre (but oddly welcoming) sense of humor. Faith still plays a role here, this time tangled with authentic Estonian occultism and ancestral magic.
After a bold literary adaptation and a hypnotic folk horror, his next act draws inspiration from an entirely different tradition. Sarnet’s latest film fuses ‘70s Wuxia with Orthodox monasticism, adapting Not of This World by Andrey Shapoval. The result is a spiritual action movie brimming with Hollywood glitz—but filtered through a lens of unapologetic Slavic kitsch (in the best way possible).