Ain Mäeots

Ain Mäeots (born December 25, 1971) is an Estonian stage, film, and television actor and stage, film, and television director and producer. Ain Mäeots' first film role as an actor was a small role in the 2000 Mare Raidma directed short Lunastus, for Faama Film and Eesti Televisioon. In 2005, he appeared in his first feature-length film as Lembitu in the Kaaren Kaer directed comedy Malev; a skewed interpretation of Estonia's history set in the year 1208.

In 2007, he made a cameo appearance in the Rain Tolk and Andres Maimik directed comedy Jan Uuspõld läheb Tartusse (English release title: 186 Kilometers), in which Estonian actor Jan Uuspõld plays a down-on-his-luck caricature of himself, trying to hitchhike from Tallinn to Tartu to perform in a role at the Vanemuine theater. In 2008, Mäeots made his debut as a film director with the Exitfilm biography Taarka, based on the play of the same name by Kauksi Ülle about the difficult life of Seto folk singer Hilana Taarka.

Taarka has the distinction of being the first feature-length film in the Seto dialect. Mäeots also made a brief appearance in the film in the role of a villager. Taarka won the 2008 Estonian Cultural Endowment Debut Award. In 2012, he co-wrote and directed his second film, the drama Deemonid. The film chronicles the unraveling of three people who enter a casino and subsequently confronting their inner demons.

In 2013, he appeared as Erik in the Hardi Volmer directed historical melodrama feature film Elavad pildid, which follows two Estonians, a girl and a boy, born at the beginning of the 20th-century in a Baltic German manor, through the coming decades and all of the revolutions, wars, military occupations, regime collapses, and new beginnings. In 2015, he played the role of Captain Evald Viires in the Elmo Nüganen directed war film 1944.

The film is set in World War II and is shown through the eyes of Estonian soldiers who had to pick sides and thus fight against their fellow countrymen. It was selected as the Estonian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but it was not nominated. In 2019, he played the role of Joosep in the Mart Sander directed fantasy-horror film Kõhedad muinaslood.