Dzidra Ritenberga

A housewife confronts situations to which no sane response exists... “Madwomen: To Be a Sparrow Not a Canary” is an experimental found footage melodrama composed entirely out of film footage shot in Soviet Estonia from 1960 until 1969. An experimental collage creating an alternative narrative to the storylines in the animations, documentaries and feature films of that time period.

Nina and Nikolai Jansoni seem to have everything: successful careers, a comfortable home and a car. When Nina gives birth despite doctors’ warnings, a tragic mix-up leads her to believe that her baby has died. Afraid to tell her husband the truth, she accepts another child as her own. When the mistake is eventually uncovered, Nina rejects her biological child, who is taken in by a nurse, Inta. Years later, her dormant maternal feelings awaken, and Nina sets out to reclaim the child she once gave up.

Imants and Linda buy a country house from an elderly woman, unaware that the property comes with a young boy, Albīns, who has been left in her care. When the former owner suddenly dies, the couple find themselves drawn into a difficult question about the boy’s future. As they learn the truth about his absent parents and the reasons he was abandoned, Imants and Linda grow deeply attached to Albīns.

No synopsis available yet.

The action of the film takes place in Latvia and spans the period from 1939 to the early 1970s. The events that occurred in the country had various effects on the fates of the characters. But throughout it all, love guided them — it scattered and gathered, made them suffer terribly, and made them the happiest people in the world...

Early 20th-century Latvia. Revolutionary Mārtiņš Robežnieks is arrested by the gendarmes, while his younger brother Jānis, a teacher dismissed for his rebellious speeches, returns to their family home. Initially, Jānis continues to agitate among the farm workers, but his marriage to the estate manager’s daughter gradually draws him away from the revolutionary cause. When the upheaval of 1905 reaches their homeland, Mārtiņš returns from Riga as peasants rise against the baron’s rule.

Young actress Veronika Berga is waiting for her big break while earning a living dubbing animated films. When her little daughter Vita suddenly falls ill and is admitted to hospital, a colleague advises Veronika to seek the help of renowned specialist Professor Nikolajs Jansons. Desperate to secure the best care for her child, Veronika poses as a journalist and finds a way to approach the professor, hoping to persuade him to examine Vita.

Successful work and life of a brave militia captain who does not know much about human psychology.

Armīns, a carefree and self-centered young man, suddenly finds his life turned upside down when he becomes responsible for seven-year-old Zigis after the boy’s parents die in a tragic accident.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

Based on a story by Janis Lapsa, written by Janis Lapsa and Andris Kolbergs, film is a singular work, filled with human warmth. It is a story about a talented surgeon Markalns, who after a serious personal crisis, returns to his native town in order to start his life anew. The attention is concentrated on the inner world of Markalns, his feelings in this so important period of his life, when to endure and to proceed means to regain the lost sense of life and himself. His character and emotional world opens in a wide scale: in collisions with colleagues, patients, friends, himself. He is contradictory, but even in moments of low spirits, virile. A real warmth and balance of mind is brought in the life of the outwardly robust and clumsy surgeon by a shy small-town girl Irita, called Doggie.

An adventurous love story of a veterinarian from Riga, a cheerful loser Andris.

No synopsis available yet.

Arvīds Lasmanis can't hold any job for long because he is not ready to tolerate deceit and slapdash work. He still has to feed his family, by chance he finds a well-paid job as a gravedigger. A friend helps Arvīds to find a place in a construction team, but other workers don't approve of Arvīds' high principles. His wife accuses him of not knowing how to make money, the family lives crammed in one room of a shared flat. The Soviet absurd comedy tells a story about a man who, while at odds with the system, won't lose his conscience and his true self, even if it means saying no to wealth and comfort.

A band arrives late at the competition. They try to find the jury and show their performance.

An inspector is torn between her conviction of there being a need to reconstruct a factory, and a love interest who asks of her not to do that in order for him to further his career.

Mari has successfully led a collective farm in 1950s and fulfilled all tasks given from the authorities. Nonetheless, things in the collective farm become progressively worse. The Committee of the Communist Party sends its representative Peeter who learns that Mari acts as a tyrant for the local people. She has to resign during the elections of the new manager. Being without authority has a damaging effect on her so she starts to regain her position with the help of her old stalinist tricks.

Savely and Lelya are leading a quiet peaceful life in a forest reserve, in a small village with a mineral spring, where Savely brought his seriously ill wife. The seemingly routine life can not hide deep and tender love that came a bit too late...

No synopsis available yet.

About the Soviet actor of theater and cinema, Honored Artist of the RSFSR - Evgeny Yakovlevich Urbansky recalled Vasily Livanov, Polina Filippovna, Grigory Chukhrai, Grigory Elanchik, Yuli Reisman, Sophia Pavlova, Evgeny Leonov, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Nina Drobysheva, Yuri Nagibin and others. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko reads poems dedicated to Yevgeny Urbansky. The film also features fragments of movies with his participation.

The Second World War is over. The post-war Germany is divided into several responsibility zones. Still many Russian people languish in camps located in the American zone. Though former allies are in no hurry to let them off to the motherland, and even try to enroll some of them. The American intelligence agency gets to know that they've got a daughter of one of the West Germany cities commandant, whose brother is a famous soviet rocket engineering designer. They plan a crafty operation on the discrimination of the Russian colonel and introduction of the niece into the uncles design office. The Russian Intelligence service is also aware of the Americans interest in the designers works. The special department colonel Lartsev is coming from Moscow to Germany to prepare a reciprocal operation.

No synopsis available yet.

A Soviet propaganda film about the establishment of Bolshevik power in the Ukrainian countryside through the story of a woman's fate.

Returning to his native village at the end of his military service, Victor (Yuri Sarantsev) brought his bride into the house - and soon they got married. Victor works on the collective farm with great enthusiasm, he is appointed a foreman, but the happiness of old Danila, Victor’s father, is overshadowed by dirty gossip - as if Victor’s father is not he, but Shandybovich, whose unseemly deeds were recently exposed by Victor.

No synopsis available yet.

Unwilling to dedicate herself to her husband, the restless wife of a provincial village fisherman seeks out love from every man she meets. This results in a romantic triangle that is at once disarmingly simplistic and intensely dramatic.

This screen adaptation of Andrejs Upītis' novella marks the debut in Latvian cinema of two of the first graduates of the Moscow Film Institute - director Varis Krūmiņš and cinematographer Māris Rudzītis. An egg comes out of a shopping bag and breaks in the street, triggering a chain of events that entangles the accountant Krastiņš, his fiancée Ada, a minister, a poet, a critic, a minister and other members of the highest circles...

German troops leave a small town located on the border of Western Ukraine and Poland. The Pilsudians seize power in the city. Bolshevik, who returned from prison, heads the underground revolutionary committee.