Baltic Cinema

The Only English Language Page Dedicated to Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Cinema

Baltic Cinema

Interview with Austeja Urbaitė on Remember to Blink

"I call this emotional blindness."

Baltic Cinema

Holy Destructors

A Baltic film festival would be incomplete without a documentary in the poetic tradition of the Baltic countries.

Baltic Cinema

Renovation

My favourite film from the section.

Baltic Cinema

Borderline

Unless you’re from Eastern Europe, there is a good chance you don’t know that Lithuania shares a border with Russia on the east – as do more Eastern European countries than would like to – and also on the west. It’s a small enclave of Russia called the Kaliningrad

Baltic Cinema

Flesh, Blood, Even a Heart

The difference between a Barbie doll and a 30-something is that nothing bad happens to the toy when you throw it to the ground.

Baltic Cinema

Becoming

With such a descriptive title, it’s no surprise that Zhannat Alshanova’s feature directorial debut is a coming-of-age story. The action takes place in Kazakhstan during the post-Soviet era. Seventeen-year-old Mila (Tamiris Zhangazinova) is a talented swimmer and a stereotypically ornery teenage daughter. Her mother (Assel Kaliyeva) isn’t

Baltic Cinema

Red Code Blue

Sometimes justice needs extraordinary means.

Baltic Cinema

New Money

Two normal people wake up with inordinate wealth.

Baltic Cinema

Fränk

Fränk is a dark film where children can overdose, young boys can kill each other, and where disabled men relentlessly cry from the pure evil inflicted upon them.

Baltic Cinema

Hunger Strike Breakfast

A cinéma vérité approach and adds a dose of absurdism to the crucial Lithuanian historical events of January 1991.

Baltic Cinema

Therapy

Some activities are intrinsically more cinematic than others. Boxing, for example, with its crunched yet still kinetic space and big lights, is naturally more cinematic than the much less physically dramatic chess. Group therapy is difficult to place on this spectrum of anti-cinematic activities on one hand and inherently cinematic

Baltic Cinema

The Activist

It can be tender. It can be classically dramatic. It can be sexy. And it can be thrilling.

Baltic Cinema

Happiness is Living in our Land

Appropriately messy and entertaining doc about Estonian punk band...

Baltic Cinema

Radical Filmmaking & Killing Penises: An Interview with Miguel Llansó on Infinite Summer

"I first wanted to kill the penis."

Baltic Cinema

Infinite Summer

Perfectly fits into the contemporary Estonian film landscape with its ironic genre play, strange sexual verve, and popping embrace of quirky digital visuals.

Baltic Cinema

Laguna

Grief can be foreboding like a lagoon; it can simultaneously and contrapuntally be a site for a baptismal-like transformation. Laguna understands this.

Toronto International Film Festival 2025

Interview with Director Valentyn Vasyanovych & Producer Volodymyr Yatsenko on To the Victory!

We would like to say to the readers of this article: pay attention to your family, to your friends. There probably is not that much time left, so have fun.

Toronto International Film Festival 2025

To the Victory!

More hopeful than most of contemporary Ukrainian cinema.

Baltic Cinema

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel resists the ordinary in favor of the idiosyncratic and renegade.

Paid-members only

Baltic Cinema

Motorcycle Summer

Klassiki Journal

Video Essay: The Soviet Jean-Luc Godard Hollywood Forgot

“Our very own Godard”

Baltic Cinema

GO TO: Faithful unto Death (2024) dir. Ivars Zviedris

Faithful unto Death will be having its North American premiere this Saturday, May 17, at the West Newton Cinema.

Baltic Cinema

Rolands Kalniņš: riding the Baltic New Wave with “Latvia’s Godard”

One of the most important Latvians to ever stand behind a camera.

Essays

The Klassiki Podcast: Jonas Mekas — a Lithuanian abroad

I was honored to join host Sam Goff on the Klassiki Podcast to discuss the life and work of the Lithuanian avant garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas.

Baltic Cinema

BBFF Interview: Tomas Vengris

Part of the Boston Baltic Film Festival 2025