Era Film

Trains opens with a quote from Franz Kafka: “There is plenty of hope. An infinite amount of hope. But not for us.” These words hang like a dark cloud over this found footage documentary, which creates a collective portrait of people in 20th century Europe, capturing their hopes, desires, dramas, and tragedies.

Between 1944 and 1953, 170,000 Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians put up fierce resistance to the Soviet invasion, hiding deep in the vast Baltic forests. Driven by a dream of freedom, they defied a ruthless empire with few resources but unwavering determination. Through previously unseen archives and the poignant accounts of the last survivors, this documentary reveals their clandestine struggle, their heroic sacrifices, and their legacy, timeless symbols of a desperate fight to escape the Soviet stranglehold and preserve the flame of independence.

The film consists of three chapters. The Manslayer takes place more than a hundred years ago. The leading character Maara is a young bride who is about to start her life in her new family. The Virgin, set in the spring of 1949, tells the story of a young woman called Elina, who has been deported from Ingria into Estonia during the previous war. The Shadow moves in the present, on the border of real life and fantasy. The main character, Luna Lee, has decided to flee from home. Is there anything besides emptiness somewhere? The film is led by the singularity of the leading character - Maara, Elina and Luna Lee are all played by the same actress.

At 18, the beautiful and intelligent Kira comes to Petersburg as the Communists consolidate power. She rebuffs a cousin who rises in the Party and may remember the slight. She falls in love with Leo, the son of an aristocrat, who gets into political trouble and never gets out.

Audrius Mickevičius puts the horribly disfigured face of his murdered brother at the start of his film. It is almost a meditation about the question whether a final act like murder can be atoned for in a temporal order – and whether the passing of time allows the victim’s family to forgive. Mickevičius uses the example of two lifers (one of them gets married and wants to have children, the other pours his whole passion into an idea of craftsmanship) and a philosopher with prison experience to make that strange state of suspended life comprehensible.

A summer evening twenty-five years ago: the city is deserted, the final of the FIFA World Cup is underway. A woman, Teresa, comes down to the Tiber and lets herself be carried away by its current. She is swallowed by the river and her daughter Virginia crosses Rome in the dark of the night: she wants to find her and save her. Virginia has to make her way through the depths of the waters, of the history, myths, calamities and gleams of life of a timeless Rome. And so she is able to see again her mother, who emerges from the darkness of the Tiber to fly toward AMOR, “the planet of care” surrounded by water where the streets, squares and fountains remind her of Rome and animals are free to wander around.

In the spring of 2022, a forgotten photographic treasure was discovered in Lithuania - 840 negatives that had been hiding in the museum's archives for over 80 years. The documentary tells the story of the Museum's persistent researchers, whose patience and stubbornness resurrect the past, leading us through the labyrinth of the archives, where every answer gives rise to new questions.

A tiny classroom is a meeting point and a shelter for those who have come to Spain driven by the "European dream" to start a new life. Brought together by fate, these immigrants share disillusionment, alienation and yearn for a return home.

A tiny caterpillar naps cozily with his kitty friends. A playful ball of wool wakes up the caterpillar. Teasing and tickling, the ball awakens the caterpillar’s dream to fly. The caterpillar follows the ball to the garden and together with the kitties they amuse themselves and mess around. Finally, the ball of wool leads the way into a spooky place full of spiders. Their friendship overcomes the fear of darkness and turns into magic. Live your dreams and you will fly.

Follows the expedition led by veteran mountaineer Algimantas Jucevicius to the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.