Rolands Kalnins

A six-year-old boy plots to stop his "sweetheart", a grown-up woman in his pre-World War II Latvian village, from marrying.

Land surveyors arrive in two parishes to measure and redistribute manor land. The rivalry between both feoffees for land and woman begins.

After losing his job, Kārlis is forced into grueling work at a remote peat quarry—only to find himself caught between the Communist underground and the Latvian counterintelligence service, where every choice carries a moral cost.

Latvia in the 1920s. The enterprising Edgars Ceplis establishes a company to produce bricks from Latvian clay for export. Many are involved in his project, hoping for the huge profits the venture promises. Ceplis soon becomes infatuated with his office typist Austra Zīle and starts neglecting the business...

Donats is a modern-day Don Juan juggling the various women in his life seemingly without any consequences, until he falls in love with Agnese. Her husband, Ralfs, turns out to be a formidable opponent.

The first film in a duology based on the biography of Latvian revolutionary Jānis Fabricius. Mārtiņš Venta, the son of a forest ranger, enrolls in a Riga gymnasium and becomes an underground activist, while his classmate, Dace, a teacher's daughter, is expelled from the Riga school for singing the revolutionary song Kā gulbji balti padebeši iet. Dace becomes an actress, but Mārtiņš is drafted into the tsar's army. He refuses to participate in the shooting of a workers' demonstration and is sentenced to exile, but before his deportation, Mārtiņš is allowed to marry Dace in prison.

The path of the main character to the tops of creative work is a chain of victories and losses, in which gains and irretrievable losses alternate.

During World War II three best friends are mobilized into the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion. Years later their fates continue to intertwine, as memories of war loom in back of their minds.

A story about children helping the Soviet Army during the war.

Head of the CID and his colleagues are investigating a serious crime but the main witnesses are of no help.

Cezars Kalnins installs telephones by day and composes pop songs by night. His band has a hard time receiving the permit from Soviet censorship authorities for a public debut. A member of the Culture Committee superficially listens to Cēzars' songs and deems the lyrics "unsuitable and frivolous” and "unfit for the Soviet youth”, and is later powerless to stop the grindstone of public debate, which she has herself initiated.

A businessman and a footballer are murdered before an important football match in Prague. Investigation has to be started.

The wonderful power of folk songs and dances that helps to notice the beauty of the world and human relations.

This screen adaptation of Andrejs Upītis' novella marks the debut in Latvian cinema of two of the first graduates of the Moscow Film Institute - director Varis Krūmiņš and cinematographer Māris Rudzītis. An egg comes out of a shopping bag and breaks in the street, triggering a chain of events that entangles the accountant Krastiņš, his fiancée Ada, a minister, a poet, a critic, a minister and other members of the highest circles...

A political film based in Latvian countryside in 1947.

Based on the popular novel of the same title by Vilis Lācis. Latvia, the 1930s. Roberts Līviņš, the son of a dockhand, becomes an architect by his own efforts, thanks to arduous work and talent. But in his relationship with Līvija, the daughter of the rich entrepreneur Ulpe, Roberts realizes that the high society might look down on his common origins as well as his sister Alise, a hairdresser, and her boyfriend Ēriks, an opportunist and former boxer.

The colourful musical comedy Maritime Climates could have been a triumph of smart political satire – if people in positions of power hadn’t got worried by the rushes they saw, which lead them to terminate the production. In 1992, Rolands Kalniņš made this edit of the remaining material – an elegy to lost hopes and illusions.

A story about the significance of Goethe’s Faust in the development of Latvian literature, language, publishing, culture and theatre. The video highlights the intersection of world cultures and their mutual development, as well as the courage of the people to break the boundaries of stereotypic attitudes.

What happens in the eyes of a 100-year-old filmmaker? Rolands Kalniņš, one of the great masters of Latvian cinema, sits down to have his photo taken and looks straight in the lens. Kalniņš’ life has spanned an authoritarian regime, a world war, long years under Soviet occupation and censorship, and retirement in independent Latvia. His films have been censored, destroyed, found and restored. But here, like Herz Frank once did with a child, for ten minutes we shall observe the micro-emotions of a man who has dedicated his life to film. Confronted directly by the tool of his trade, the camera. As we face Kalniņš eye to eye, we hear the sounds of his present, and the memories of his past.

The hard work plays an important role in the personal growth of a runner.