Upper body strength means little in fencing. It is all about the legs. Lunging and retreating are key to the sport, or as Endel Nelis puts it: “controlling the distance between you and your opponent.” Those instincts have also served him well as a fugitive from Stalin’s secret police.
He has come to Haapsalu, Estonia, because the provincial town is the perfect place to lay low. However, his fencing classes attract dangerous attention in Klaus Härö’s biographical drama, “The Fencer,” Finland’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screened as part of the AFI’s 2015 EU Film Showcase, and opens in New York on July 21.
The school principal is the sort of petty apparatchik who resents any form of talent or accomplishment. Naturally, he takes an instinctive dislike to Nelis, the new physical education teacher from sophisticated St. Petersburg (or Leningrad as a Party hack might call it).
