Imbi Paju

Who is Imbi Paju?

Imbi Paju is an Estonian-born journalist, writer and filmmaker resident in Finland.

Paju has been operating in Finland as a correspondent of the Estonian newspapers Eesti Päevaleht and Postimees. Before Estonia's re-independence, she worked in Tartu's Vanemuine Theatre opera chorus. 1998-2005 she worked Finnish TV-station Nelonen, specialist in the Baltics

Film director, author and journalist Imbi Paju has won international attention with Memories Denied, her awardwinning documentary film and book of the same name. Both the film and the book deal with her mother’s experiences in a Soviet slave labor camp, the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and the attempts by totalitarian regimes to destroy human memory. Paju has been praised for her ability to visually portray traumas of the past, something that is hard to do with words alone. Memories Denied shows us how the tragedy of an individual family repeated over and over gradually becomes a national tragedy, a part of the collective but interrupted European narrative, silenced by occupations and the cold reality of politics. Memories Denied has been translated and published in Estonian, Finnish, Swedish, English and Russian. In 2007 it was selected for use in the Swedish school program Living History, which deals with both Nazi and Communist crimes. In 2008 the film Memories Denied was translated into Russian, as was the book in 2009. Since then Paju has travelled around Estonia presenting the book to Russian-speaking communities and has had the pleasure to meet with students, teachers, community groups, and others.