Selected Projects
| Country of origin | Title of the project | Producer /Director / Company | Synopsis |
| ARMENIA | |||
| AM/NO | Armenia Wants a Piece of the North Pole… and the South Pole too! | Prod., Dir. Vardan Hovhannisyan | The North and South Poles – melting ice, scarce resources, invoking fierce competition between big nations. Armenia wants in too…Using the humorous device of claims to the North and South Poles by two Armenian comedians, this film will highlight the absurd lengths to which nations go in the name of greed. |
| ESTONIA | |||
| Ahto | Prod. Erik Norkroos
Dir. Jaanis Valk |
On this planet we live on, covered with blue water, we all have something in common independent of our skin, sex or age. We all have a dream… This is a film about a young man who grew up on the Baltic Sea coast and through lessons from his father, a deep-sea captain, learned the mentality of the coastal people, and about making a dream come true. | |
| Hallo Cosmos, Hallo Põltsamaa! | Prod. Riho Västrik
Dir. Heli Tetlov |
The secret manufacture of space food for Soviet astronauts was launched in 1962 in the Estonian town of Põltsamaa. While Moscow celebrates the first human flight into space, tube-food experts and astronauts come together to unveil the old recipes and take a gastronomic trip from the past to modern day. | |
| Out of Fashion | Prod. Katrin Kissa
Dir. Jaak Kilmi |
A documentary about one fashion designer’s initiative to change the fashion industry’s environment-gluttonizing nature with an ethical way to produce clothing. Thousands of factories in the third world don’t only produce clothing for different large companies, but also tons of textile waste that travels straight to landfills (or into nature, if there are no landfills); If unsold jeans from big retailers are cut into pieces and thrown in trash bins to free up space for new products, why not re-design dresses from the unsold jeans instead? In our film, trash is fashion. It is the black conscience hidden behind the fashion industry’s radiant smile. | |
| EE/FR/UK | Dora Gordine: Ars Gratia Artis | Prod. Peeter Urbla
Dir. Annaleena Piel Linna |
Art. Adventure. Passion. Pretence. Joie de vivre. The illustrious life of Dora Gordine (1895-1991): sculptor, designer, high-society darling, opportunist extraordinaire, and a closeted Jewish runaway who rose from the pits of Eastern Europe to find herself in line for the British throne. |
| GEORGIA | |||
| See You In Chechnya | Prod., Dir. Alexander Kvatashidze
Lokokina |
See You in Chechnya is a deeply personal authored film about the intertwined stories of a group of idealistic war reporters who risked everything to cover a vicious conflict more than a decade ago – and how the experiences of those who survived continue to affect their lives today. | |
| GERMANY | |||
| GE/PL | Stalin, Mon Amour | Prod: Michael Truckenbrodt
Dir: Piotr Rosolowski time prints / Kosma |
A film about the Georgian women who work in the Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori. All of the museum’s employees adore the brutal dictator, while many are head-over-heels in love with him. They worship paintings of him. They dream about him. The museum is located in his childhood home and the dictator is portrayed not only as a politician and victor, but first and foremost as a loving husband and caring father.
What is the secret of Stalin’s popularity among the women of Gori? Why is this man, seen by the world as one of the worst despots of all time, adored so much here? This is explained to us by the museum’s female employees of various generations. |
| IRELAND | |||
| IE/LT | Voices … | Prod. Jeremiah Cullinane, Rasa Miškinyte
Dir. Mark Byrne, Robert Dennis |
Stories from the lives of a range of people living in exile, close to home, but far away. |
| LATVIA | |||
| The Chronicles of the Last Temple | Prod.Guntis Trekteris
Dir. Dāvis Sīmanis |
The film poetically observes and records the construction of the new Latvian National Library, the most controversial and long-discussed edifice in modern Latvian history. Twenty years after the first sketches, it has become the most expensive public building in Riga, as well as an object of both protests and radical attacks, and a never-ending debate of its visual qualities. Three characters: the chief architect, a jib-crane operator, and a protester, have been chosen to reveal the eternal conflict between the greatness of conception and mass sacrifice in the name of obscure ideas. | |
| My Six Million Dollar Fraudster Father | Prod. Līga Gaisa
Dir. Ieva Ozoliņa |
A film about a successful self-made banker during the first years after the collapse of the USSR who fled the country in order to escape the arrest for illegal operations. Sought by the Interpol for more than 15 years, he gives a hint of his existence in Kuala Lumpur’s mental asylum… A film about a man who loses himself in times of change. | |
| LV/RUS | Without Fear | Prod: Guntis Trekteris
Dir. Herz Frank, Maria Kravchenko |
In 2004 Larisa Trembovler , philosophy professor and mother of five children leaves her husband and marries Yigal Amir – the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. Three years later she gives birth to their son. The unique story of life, death and love is to be told by veteran filmmaker Hertz Frank. |
| Sugar Roads | Prod. Antra Cilinska
Dir. Liene Laviņa |
In inter-war independent Latvia there were three sugar factories in total. There was a popular saying in the country that in every tea cup three teaspoons of sugar should be poured in – one for each of the factories. Sugar production was the pride of the nation, its symbol and identity. It combined the ideal of Latvians as of an agricultural people and at the same time the ideal of the industrial development, modernization, bidding national interests in the first place and the ideal of successful competing in the international market. In 2007 the last sugar factory got closed in Latvia – it was the sugar factory of Jelgava.
This film tells about impact of how joining the European Union, which has brought the long-awaited equal participation in the European community, has made an impact on society on different levels – economically, politically, emotionally. |
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| LITHUANIA | |||
| Toys | Prod. Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė
Dir. Lina Lužytė |
The film tells five stories of the ordinary people of Zhlobin – a small town in Belorus. Its locals have come up with a business idea to make and sell plush toys. They are all making toys, selling them, having chats, drinks, making toys again, singing, fighting and… making toys again | |
| Father | Prod. Dagnė Vildžiūnaitė
Dir. Marat Sargsyan |
Vidas Zenonas Antonovas has been nicknamed “Father of the Mafia“. 20 years of his life has been spent doing time in 15 different prisons. Now he is 71 and has a big family – 10 children, 2 grandchildren, and a newborn son. This is a documentary about the drive of an insatiable lust for life. | |
| Living Among Herbs | Prod. Arunas Matelis
Dir. Ramune Rakauskaite |
A story about women of incredible destiny and mission: to some people they are sorcerers or witches, but to others – savers who cure people suffering from dangerous illnesses by using herbs and incantations. These three herbalists, today’s Avicennas, suffered painful and tragic breakdowns in their own lives, and found salvation from the ups and downs of the body and soul as well as solitude in herbs. They live in harmony with nature, with its many treasures and secrets, analogous to those in pharmaceutical laboratories. | |
| NORWAY | |||
| Northerners in Times of Cholera | Prod. Bjørn Enes
Dir. Frode Vestad |
Modernity meant prosperity to Europe: Wealth – freedom – enlightenment. But it broke through by bloodshed, riots, wars, epidemics and mass death. Northerners in times of cholera is the story about how the impact of microbes grew bigger than the impact of greed, thirst for power and revolutionary struggle for freedom. | |
| POLAND | |||
| Buddies | Prod. Paweł Kedzierski
Dir. Joanna Kaczmarek Kronika Film Studio |
A film about an unusual friendship. Blind Rysiek has no other choice: if he wants to carry on with his passion – marathon running – he has to rely on Felek. However, it becomes apparent that in everyday life it is Felek who relies on Rysiek. With his strong will and determination, Rysiek proves time after time that in fact anything is possible. It is Rysiek who becomes a driving force in Felek’s life, and not the other way around. | |
| RUSSIA | |||
| Men’s Choice | Prod. Vlad Ketkovich
Dir. Elena Demidova |
Geography of the film – from the Arctic Circle to the south of Russia. Heroes – shift workers who produce gas. Two or three months they work in the north. Gas goes to Europe. Workers go home. At home their neighbors are poorly paid and drink. Our heroes make their men’s choice and go to the north again. It is a hard work, they are far from their families, but they come home with money. there is no more time and reasons to drink. There is no hopelessness and despair any more. They are different people already. They are men. | |
| Perm-36, a Territory of Freedom | Prod., Dir. Sergey Kachkin
April Film Lab |
Perm-36 is a unique historic museum of political repression in Russia. Annually the public civic Forum Pilorama takes place here. In the camp were such well-known political prisoners as Sergey Kovalev (a busy human rights activist), Mikhail Meilakh (a literary scholar, PhD, professor of Strasburg University), Timofeev Lev (a literary critic and novelist). The main idea is to bring the former prisoners to the camp during the Pilorama Forum. Through the organized discussion try to understand: should the modern society of Russia solve the problems of the whole Russian history of the XX century? Should the Russian government develop a national program in memory of victims of the totalitarian regime? What’s going on with democracy or in general, with civic society in our days in Russia? | |
| Heralds from the Big World | Prod. Vlad Ketkovich
Dir. Tatyana Soboleva |
Every year in May, 20 doctors, men and women, leave their families, board a ship and sail until the autumn. They travel to locations inaccessible by roads, but only via the river as soon as the ice disappears. They are envoys of the big world. | |
| SWEDEN | |||
| I Stop Time | Prod. Jan Blomgren
Dir. Gunilla Bresky |
I Stop Time is the unique testimony from a war photographer during the Second World War. Vladislav Mikosha is a young, charismatic man who loves movies. He works in cinema and decides to become a cinematographer. One beautiful summer night his life completely changes. Hitler’s troops attack, and soon he is in the war documenting unimaginable atrocities. He holds the camera up as a shield and miraculously survives. |
C/O Nacionālais Kino centrs