Laila Pakalnina

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

A film about everything changing while remaining the same. Or rather – everything remaining the same while changing. We observed this (and wanted to share) while standing (standing regularly and for a long time) on a road rather close to the Eastern border of Latvia, because we followed the suggestion of the locals who asked to shoot “that horrible road”.

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

A film about a plastic spoon and a society that has reached a high level of development – oil is being retrieved from subterranean depths, transported to processing plants, turned into plastic, transported to another plant, where it acquires the shape of a spoon, transported to convenience stores, where we buy it, and is then soon tossed into the trash. In other words, this is a film about the efforts put into making a spoon that can be thrown away so effortlessly.

As soon as I finished my first marathon, I wanted to become a tripod in order to make a film about it. That is because words are certainly not the right instruments to tell us what it’s like to run a marathon. I think we can try to show it through the characters, noises, texts, lights, the absolute physical understanding of shadows and of the sun, the water, the motions and the serenity. For those who do not practice running in marathons because they don’t want to or because they can’t, I wish to bring something from inside the marathon, out; for example, for my Mum, whose legs ache. I am acting like a spy sent into the marathon.

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. So what exactly is the place where the Latvians are "singing out"? It may be safely said that it's the same place where they are skiing. That's how we make mountains out of molehills...Snow-covered mountains, to be sure.

Waterfall and I, and – no, the other way around! This film is, of course, about nature – human nature. Or – what a human can do with the widest waterfall in Europe.

Just like ordinary people, whole nations often wonder why their neighbors are living better than they are. For example, where did the Estonians living on Mohni Island suddenly get bicycles and sewing machines? Could the answer have some connection with the Latvian cargo ship "Rasma", which sank near Mohni in 1941?