
Alise Zariņa
2021Blakus
Alise Zariņa
Anta Aizupe, Āris Matesovičs
By chance, Louise and Kaspars meet on a trip to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve. She’s running away from annoying neighbours and general sense of pointlessness; he’s running away from a failing marriage. They’re both young, talented, and lost; they both want to become artists; they’re both unsure how to go on about their lives. Maybe that’s why their shared trip turns into a strange, sometimes funny and sometimes complicated journey through a relationship over the course of three years.
Nearby
savĀdā
Alise Zariņa
An observational reflection on the body and existing in one’s social as well as physical “skin”. “To break out of their traumas and the ingrained ideas of normality and the fictional ideal of femininity, and to make their bodies truly their own – this is the goal of two young women who use their bodies as a tool of protest and a work of art,” writes the filmmaker.
skin-deep
Normāli cilvēki
Alise Zariņa
Indulis Smiltēns, Guna Zariņa
After his wife kicks him out of the house, an elderly, anti-social and quite conservative man Arvīds decides to reconnect with his grandson by staying with the boy and his mother. Not keen on their lifestyle, the old man tries hard to accept all the eccentricities of the young and liberal. Fortunately for him, a warm-hearted friend of Arvīds’ ex-daughter-in-law is always around to help and he seems to be a natural when it comes to children and other stubborn people. When Arvīds finds out that the young man is gay, he decides he has had enough. Often, life is not that much about finding your place, as about learning how to share that place with others. This short film is a light and playful experience, looking into the definition of “normal” that varies so strongly from generation to generation.
Ordinary People
Pēdējais zvans
Alise Zariņa
After receiving an edict from the municipal authorities about the closing of their school, the students at Mežvidi primary school continue to attend lessons and exercise creativity and fun, but it’s all clouded in a sense of fatality. They aren’t many students, and because of that the school resembles a large family rather than an institution. Near the Russian border, deep in the Latgale region, this place will become a nowhere-land once the youth depart. In an intimate message about a national problem, the story focuses on three sisters for whom life is about to drastically change. Through their daily lives and small adventures we try to understand the real meaning of the contention that “the countryside is dying”. And we see hope.
The Last Day of School