Documentary films with a sense of humour: A retrospective of Laila Pakalnina

There are places that we don’t want to know anything about, places that we would rather pretend don’t exist at all. One such place is a dumpsite. From the humans’ point of view, it is a ghastly place, a stinking desert of trash. But it’s a desert that is teaming with life. The astounding profusion of insects, reptiles, birds and mammals, all intertwined in an existential life-death relationship imparts to it with some strangely alluring dream-like quality.

Already before Marija is born it is clear that she will be a person getting into 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?

A film about the daily life of Martins, a handicapped child who will always be dependent on his parents.

Rubiks’ Road is a bicycle path built in the 1980s and named after Alfreds Rubiks, leader of the Latvian Communist party at the time.

The city is a frenetic place, and a reason is needed for asking the people to stop for a moment and stand in front of the movie camera.

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.

The Tallin-Kaliningrad bus crosses three borders during one night: Estonian-Latvian, Latvian-Lithuanian and Lithuanian-Russian.

A man in a grey coat roams the city. He is interested in boys and men. Those good enough for him will get a green bag. Marija is home alone. She is the only woman to get a green bag. But the film does not end quite there.

A ferry crosses the river. The work of the ferry is never-ending. It is a boat that transports people from one shore to another, from one country to another, without ever stopping, regardless of the changing seasons.

"The Linen" is a silent dissertation on the daily life of a truck driver who delivers clean linens to a children's hospital. He unloads the sheets and divides them up among the wards, where small, gripping dramas of life and death are unfolding. And every day it's the same story.

A hijacker forces a plane to land in Riga, in Latvia. A child hostage wants to lean all about the country where they have landed, so he begins to ask for local chocolate, information about Latvia and so on...

Morning starts with the mail. That's customary. Let's have a look at habitual things, habitual movements, habitual life.

The story is imaginary but based on real events. An incident has occurred at an average post-Soviet school in Latvia. Somebody has defecated in the attic.

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.

An official selection at Cannes, Toronto and Berlin, this quiet comedy takes us back to the late 1950’s and the Cold War, when the white sandy beaches of Latvia were part of the Soviet Union’s frontier.

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.

What is there left in life, when you are old, poor and lonely?

Three elderly country bachelors idle away their time amidst semi-wild nature, closer to birds and pond fish than to humans.

Wake up shows the world as seen through the eyes of children. The action in the film takes place in Karosta, the former military port of Liepaja city. However, the location is secondary in relation to examining the idea childhood...

Santa Claus lives on the fourth floor of an apartment block. Santa owns seven dogs, six cats, two rabbits, one crow, one pigeon, one chinchilla, one guinea pig, ten degus and some fish...

There is a popular Latvian folksong which begins with the phrase ‘I was singing out high on a mountain’. The irony of it is that according to physical geography there are no mountains in Latvia...