Liene Bāliņa

Movies

Kolka Cool
Editor
A film that depicts the mentality of the inhabitants of a small village on the Baltic coast. Three guys are trying to fulfill their life's by drinking beer, killing time and picking up fights with neighboring villagers. The main character Andzha is trying to convince his girlfriend to marry him. The sudden arrival of his elder brother Guido starts a series of events where main roles a played by elevated self-esteem, pride and cravings for love that is stronger than death.
Threesome Dance
Editor
Four Latvian legionnaires are sentenced to death for deserting the German army. A Latvian girl heads to the German headquarters to try to free her beloved. In the few hours remaining before the execution a love triangle plays out between the girl, a German officer and the prisoner.
Victor
Editor
The only thing we can be sure of in this world is that one day we shall die. In spite of that, we tend to live our lives as if it was never going to happen. Yet there are many among us who are deprived of the right to think that way. Victor (31) has a rare form of cancer in an advanced stage; moreover, his wife is about to divorce him. Trapped in the antechamber of death and with his family falling to pieces, he knows that perhaps the most important decisions of his life must be taken here and now.
Debt to Afghanistan
Editor
There is an old saying attributed to Alexander the Great: he who will rule Afghanistan will rule the world. The film portrays “the roof of the Earth” and tracks the close links between this far-off country and Latvia.
Vogelfrei
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Four directors capture simple, yet quintessential experiences of a single individual in different periods of his life - childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.
Monotony
Editor
Following an ad in the paper, Ilze leaves her native village to become an actress. She fails the audition, but her pride won't let her return home. Her boyfriend is skeptical about her ambitions, so he comes after her to bring her back home. The plot evolves around their relationship as they pretend and lie to each other trying to end the emotional stand-off.
You're Sexy When You're Sad
Editor
The characters of the movie are closely twisted. Each of the heroes is a slave to their own passions. Only through strong will and some happy event they will be able to free themselves from their addictions.
Tristans un Izolde. Trīs stāsti par...
Editor
The Nest
Editor
A young couple of biologists and their two children move from Riga to a nature reserve where they're provided with an old country cottage. They start to repair the cottage and feel at home, but the former owner of the house suddenly returns from Canada. When he realises that the present inhabitants have kept the spirit of the place alive, he gives up his rights to the cottage. The film then concentrates on him coming to terms with his memories of his time as a guerilla, when he found his first love, his 'sister-in-arms', who betrayed him fifty years ago. The film also investigates the relationship between the young biologists and nature, and the process of reaching adulthood. The title of the film, The Nest, stands for the surroundings of living nature (the forest, the marshes, the coast) and more generally for the small fatherland that has to maintain its position among great powers such as Russia, Germany and America: countries that largely shape the fate of the characters.
In A Loop
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Eve's Garden of Paradise
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Dear Life
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A homage to Krišjānis Barons and his life's work – to collect and catalogue Latvian folksongs or dainas,thus creating the encyclopaedia of Latvian life, a poetic reflection of the knowledge of life accumulated over the centuries. The film is based on Krišjānis Barons' life during late 1800s and early 1900s – his childhood and youth in Latvia, studies and work in St. Petersburg and other places in Russia, his relationship with his faithful wife Dārta, and the awakening of the Latvian self-awareness.
The Photo of a Woman with a Boar
Editor
The 1980s. Kārlis did his military service in Afghanistan and is now confined to a wheelchair. Before he left, he had fallen in love with the teacher Judīte, but she has now married a rich man...and poses nude for Kārlis' neighbour, the cynical photographer Rūdofs. Soon Rūdolfs is found dead, and Kārlis admits to having murdered him. But investigator Konrāds suspects that Kārlis is incriminating himself.
The Coincidence of Circumstance
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Him, Her, and the Kids
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Little Tom Thumb
Editor
Little Tom Thumb's evil stepmother exploits him amd makes his life very hard, so the little shepherd boy decides to leave home and seek happiness in the world outside. There little Tom Thumb meets the Wind Mother, Forest Mother and a little old man on his way. Each of them gives him a chore to do that earns him a gift with magical power, which comes in handy when he has to defeat Scrooges, Lop-Eared Man and the Devil himself. While traveling in the world and looking for happiness, he realises he misses his grandmother and little sister...
Raspberry Wine
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Soloist Needed
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Latvian friends are helping to Estonian rock group to participate in the music competition.
My Family
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After his family was introduced on a national TV as a "perfect family", the son Robert has a hard time confronting all the lies related to this accidental fame.
Forgotten Things
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The Game
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Laikmetu griežos
Editor
A film based on novels by Latvian writer Andrejs Upīts tells a story about Latvian peasants around the 16th/17th century when they were under the role of several other countries.
Wish Me Bad Weather
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Gaidiet
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The Grand New Year's Night
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A Boy
Editor
Latvia, late 19th century. Farm-hand boy Jancis lives on a homestead with his mother, grandfather and grandmother. His world does not reach beyond the horizon, and life progresses according to the seasonal cycle – from winter through spring, summer and autumn to the next St. George's Day when farmhands often had to move to the next farm.
Reflection in the Water
Editor
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.