Gints Bērziņš

Termini (2024)

The intimacy of passing by. Heading home, to work, to see a friend, to buy dinner, or perhaps to the cinema. As the seasons change, we encounter fellow passengers along the way. They commute, sit, wait, get bored, maybe sometimes stare at their small scree ...

Podnieks On Podnieks. A Witness To History (2024)

A film about the outstanding Latvian film director Juris Podnieks, who during his lifetime gained the fame of a fighter for justice and an "eye-opener". Podnieks has created testimonies about the most important events of the twentieth century in the post- ...

Homes (2021)

The camera stands in a house, the lens pointing through the window, outdoors, where the occupants of the home are standing. They respond patiently to the camera operator's directions: a small step to the left, a little bit forward, no, back just a bit, yes ...

In the Mirror (2020)

A CrossFit trainer becomes the father of a baby girl, Snow White. Snow White's mother dies, and her father marries a young woman obsessed with CrossFit and herself. She works out all the time in order to be the best. And she re ...

The First Bridge (2020)

The First Bridge is a film about frontiers, barriers, the ways to cross over and see what goes on, on the other side. But it also a film about time, as it was shot on Kodak Negative Films acquired in the year 1997 and discovered intact in 2018. ...

The Sign Painter (2020)

A Latvian tragicomedy about a young artist who bears witness to the dramatic political upheavals of the WWII era. As brutal regimes come and go, his country, his village, his people, and even his heart are swept up in the inexorable currents of history. ...

Spoon (2019)

A film about a plastic spoon and a society that has reached a high level of development – oil is being retrieved from subterranean depths, transported to processing plants, turned into plastic, transported to another plant, where it acquires the shape of ...

Paradise 89 (2018)

Summer, 1989. City girls, Paula and Laura, spend their summer holidays in a small town with their cousins, Maija and Linda. Four girls, left unattended, enjoy freedom, imitate the life of adults, plunge into reckless adventures and get into trouble. Based ...

Magic Kimono (2017)

The story of middle-aged Japanese woman Keiko, who has been living in a shell for decades due to a family tragedy in Kobe. The modest act of eating and the sensations it gives us provided Keiko a lifeline to survive. Unwillingly, she joins a group of Japan ...

Lidija (2017)

A person's face and eyes preserve experience better than any document or recorded memoir. Particularly if a person has experienced as much as the well-known dissident Lidija Lasmane-Doroņina. Actually, she does not even think of herself as a dissident. Sh ...

The Chronicles of Melanie (2016)

The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia. Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Alexander, and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported ...

Hee (2016)

Years after she related to him the story of her parents' death in a fire, for which – rightly or wrongly – she feels responsible, Japanese psychiatrist Dr. Sanada meets his former patient Azusa once again. Back then, she lambasted him for being wrong f ...

Two Women (2014)

A headstrong young woman is married to land baron. Her feelings for her son's tutor becomes a complex web of unrequited love. ...

The Invisible City (2014)

A story about a city built as a paradise but turned into hell – a city slowly turning into paradise again, just in a different way. Igor has been living in the Chernobyl Zone for almost ten years, for peace and a chance to escape modern civilization. Psy ...

Pelican in the Desert (2014)

Latgale is a land on the very eastern edge of the European Union. Sometimes it seems like a land in the middle of a body of water. At other times, it seems a desert with the ark of rescued humanity all covered by sand. The film presents a land that is made ...

Gulf Stream Under the Iceberg (2012)

Adam's first wife Lilith is mentioned in the ancient Oriental legends, in Talmud and in the medieval books of Cabala. According to these sources, she was not created from Adam's rib like Eve but from clay like he himself. Nevertheless Lilith was not recogn ...

Hong Kong Confidential (2010)

One week in one of the most exotic and picturesque cities of the world. The day of changes comes when Amaya meets a charming Englishman, Paul and it dramatically changes Amaya's perception of her cultural and personal identity. ...

Lohengrin from Varka Kru (2009)

A creative a portrait of Latvian luger and Olympic medal winner, Martins Rubenis, who won the first Latvia's Winter Olympic medal of the games in Turin in 2006. Apart from his success in sports, in the circles of contemporary alternative culture he is know ...

Silence (Elements) (2009)

There should be silence in a museum. And someone should see to it that the silence is there. It's the logical order of things. However, it might seem weird to somebody. ...

Loss (2008)

A mentally ill young woman Valda convinces herself that a boy growing up in an orphanage is her child. Following the footsteps of a thousands Lithuanians, she immigrates to Ireland to earn money to save him. "Loss" portrays the beauty and tragedy of the hu ...

The Dark Deer (2007)

17-year-old Ria is a sensitive and mysterious young woman. Ria's mother has suffered in a car accident and has stopped speaking since her daughter's birth. The family grows deer for sale, yet, the business is not successful. To earn some money, her father ...

Vogelfrei (2007)

Four directors capture simple, yet quintessential experiences of a single individual in different periods of his life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. ...

Fire (Elements) (2007)

Even before Marija was born it was clear that she would be a person getting in trouble all the time. However, that's not all. The most important thing is that she is often alongside firemen. Is it because things around her catch fire? ...

The Water (Elements) (2006)

Maria decides to go for a swim in the pool even though it looks deserted and she's warned that the water is cold. When she gets into the pool she is faced with not only the frigid water, but with her other feelings as well. Like fear. ...

Wild Beast (2005)

In the near future of 2012, the government asks for each citizen to have 30 Lats on their credit card. Anybody not having this amount of money is deemed to be maliciously poor and arrested. ...

Romeo and Juliet (2004)

An emotional and stylistically consistent documentary musical depicting the staging of Bernstein's West Side Story with deaf youths. The dramatic material is intertwined with life and the emotional scenes of the musical; it creates a distinctive choreograp ...

The Monument (2004)

Viesturs Kairišs' 2004 documentary The Monument investigates the interpretation of Riga's Soviet Second World War memorial in the post-Soviet era. The "Victory Monument" was established by the Soviets to celebrate freeing Latvia from Nazi Germany. However ...

Papa Gena (2001)

It is what it is. One needs a reason to get a passer-by to stop in their tracks and stand in front of the camera for a while. In this case the reason was - Mozart. ...

Dangerous Summer (2000)

A historical drama about an attempt to steal the entire Latvian national wealth deposited abroad by Wilhelms Munters, the Latvian Foreign Minister in the forties. ...

The Shoe (1998)

The late 1950s. Every night, Soviet tractors comb the coast of Latvia looking for signs of anyone who could have infiltrated the Soviet border from the sea. One morning, three Soviet patrolmen discover a woman's shoe in the sand and footsteps leading to th ...

Latavio, or Life Nr. 2 (1997)

An omnibus film consisting of ten parts, each directed by a different young director from the Latvian Academy of Culture. The unifying element of the ten shorts is the place where they take place - the airport. A lot can happen there - including a strike b ...

The Oak (1997)

The oak tree in Seja is roughly 700 years old. Around this monumental tree, the peaceful and repetitive life goes on in the village, a group of houses in the middle of the forest. It is an almost unworldly existence in a condition of absolute simplicity wh ...

Ubāns (1995)

An insight into who Kondrāts Ubāns was – painter, teacher, father, friend. ...

The Mail (1995)

The morning begins when the mail is delivered - this has been a tradition for almost an eternity. This film looks at daily things, daily movements, daily life and the daily routines of the postman, which are nevertheless meaningful to those who await and r ...

The Ferry (1994)

The ferry crosses the river, transporting people from one shore to the other, from one country to another. It runs year round, never stopping. The footage was filmed on the Latvian-Belarussian border in the early 1990s - a time when the Soviet Union began ...

The Courage to Kill (1993)

Erik lives by night. He works in a nightclub and occasionally dresses up as a woman to rob rich clients. One day Erik's father arrives uninvited. It's a surprise visit that brings out memories of complicated childhood. ...

Church (1993)

Annas Ziemassvētki (1992)

Little Anna is waiting for her first Christmas. ...

The Linen (1991)

A subdued observation of daily life in a children's hospital. The driver of a delivery van regularly delivers clean linen to the wards where small, tense dramas of life and death are played out. ...

The Cathedral (1991)

The Latvian director's graduation film from Moscow Film School does not deliver images loyal to the regime but is a testimony to her journalistic background. When the independence struggle is to be suppressed by military power, the people in Riga erect bar ...

Iešana (1991)

Christian youth pilgrimage to Częstochowa, Poland, to meet with the Pope of Rome. ...

The Republic of Varnu Street (1970)

Children of Varnu Street whose fathers work in nearby factories face the "Tuliana Empire" - a group of boys, children of merchants from the nearby Lauku Street. ...