Andris Gauja

The Art of Looking

Astronomers look through telescopes and see that the universe has a structure — it’s shaped like a web. Slime mold researchers look through microscopes and see that the tiny organisms form similar patterns. In their quest of discovering the nature of things, they both show the beauty of curiosity.

A Postcard from Rome

Ernests (70) and Alvine (64), two married postal workers, have developed a scheme to win a trip to Rome, but Alvine's rapidly progressing Alzheimer's disease complicates their plan.

Keep Smiling, Mom!

Three sisters, dead broke and disconnected from each other, travel around Europe with their mother’s corpse on top of their van, trying to minimize transportation costs. The trio has to talk, reminisce and maybe even admit that underneath their fantasies of perfection — these are women in a desperate search for freedom.

Beautiful Void

Several very different characters – a pioneering physicist, an acclaimed minimalist composer, an intensive care doctor and a crematorium director – each in their own way find a strikingly similar answer to the cliché question: what is the universe made of? According to them, the ultimate source of reality is essentially empty space, which spontaneously manifests what we call matter in a magical display.

The Lesson

The Lesson tells the story of Zane, a devoted teacher mentoring the senior class in a Latvian high school. She tries to live her life in the most meaningful way possible. She takes her mission as a teacher seriously, and works hard to help her students develop their talents. Even so, as a younger teacher it’s hard for Zane to keep her distance from the class – the students soon become a sort of family to her. When she realizes she’s falling in love with one of them, the others start to feel left out. She faces a stark choice between personal happiness and the pressures of society.