Naine - Une Femme

Olga is in her fifties. She has both Estonian and Russian passports, by nationality she is Russian, and she speaks only Russian. She was born in Narva (now Estonia) and lives in Ivangorod (now Russia), two cities facing each other on either side of the river Narva. Olga speaks about herself as a woman of Perestroika. In this film she talks about going through these times with two children. She raises the issue of living on the very edge of Europe and tells about her relationship to work then and today. Olga used to work in a factory, the factory closed in the mid-eighties, then she got a job in a hospital in the city of Narva. However, since she had been given a flat in the (now) Russian part of the city, she lost her job when Estonia became independent. After having worked on markets for some years, she now crosses the border twice a day to earn a living. She is the leader of a little group who uses the limits of the system –authorised amounts of goods- to carry various commodities in their bags from Russia to Estonia