What place could be more intimate than home? And how many people are willing to let strangers — let alone a documentary film crew — inside? The diverse inhabitants of Latvia and their homes are the main theme of the experimental feature of director Laila Pakalniņa, a permanent guest of Northern Lights Film Festival. The rules of the game are straightforward: Laila and DOP Gints Bērziņš ask the residents to go outside and freeze in front of the window for exactly one minute. The goal is to create something that resembels a series of symmetrical, old-fashioned family photos. Despite the apparent simplicity of these short sketches, each of them allows us to learn more truth about the people in the frame than the largest social study — through the details of the interiors, the language, the background sound of the TV, and the attempts to calm children and dogs.

Original language: Latvian, Russian, English
Subtitles: Belarusian | English

Laila Pakalniņa's film-installation — a poetic and aesthetic ode to the home environment