The 9th Annual New York Baltic Film Festival (NYBFF) presented by Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America returns this November, bringing the best new films from the Baltic region to New York audiences. On Saturday, November 7, see a program of “Baltic Shorts,” with live-action short films from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
PORTRAIT OF GRANNY (Omamma) | Dir. Ieva Ozolina
6 min. In Latvian with English subtitles (Latvia, 2026)
Pickles, sweet tea, strawberries and a warm smile. This is how we are greeted by director Ieva Ozoliņa’s grandmother, Aina—an 88-year-young woman. Health concerns and medication, which she jokingly calls “narcotics,” have become inseparable parts of her everyday life. Yet Aina’s outlook on life is surprisingly light: there is no shortage of understanding, humor, or ability to laugh at herself and the world around her. The five phrases she uses most often are her keys to a life lived to its fullest.
CONCRETE KIDS (Betono vaikai) | Dir. Saulius Baradinskas
20 min. In Lithuanian with English subtitles (Lithuania, 2026)
This short film tells the story of kids who grew up in the courtyards of the Soviet apartment district of Lithuania. Lacking the attention and love of their parents, they needed to survive and free themselves from the violence in the streets every single day.
MY FIRST FUNERAL (Manas pirmās bēres) | Dir. Līva Klepere
15 min. In Latvian with English subtitles (Latvia, 20260
Mare looks at the world with wonder and curiosity. When her family gathers to mourn a recently deceased relative, the eight-year-old girl finds herself in an unfamiliar world, filled with dark clothing, unknown traditions and incomprehensible emotions. The more she sees, the less it makes sense to her. She opts instead for the company of her relative’s dog, hiding in a pleasantly simple, imagined reality.
A MICROPHONE IN THE HEAD (Mikrofon peas) | Dir. Robert Raska Ly
12:44 min. In Estonian with English subtitles (Estonia, 2025)
Hilja discovers that Joonas, who died in a car accident, is able to contact her through a haunted karaoke microphone. To move on to the afterlife, Joonas asks his heartbroken fiancée to visit his mother and deliver a final message—that he is gay.
SIGNAL PATH (Signalo kelias) | Dir. Eglė Razumaitė
20 min. In Lithuanian/German/English with English subtitles (Lithuania/Germany, 2026)
Liepa and her daughter move to Germany in search of a fresh start, but soon have to deal with her family’s disapproval and the challenges of metropolitan life. Director Eglė Razumaitė states: “My intention with this short film was to highlight the shift in the sex industry and to ask: How do we redefine prostitution on screen? Despite societies moving toward legal and political recognition of sex workers, we still tend to stigmatize, discriminate against, and violate their rights.”
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Ieva Ozoliņa (b.1998) is a visual artist working with analog photography and film. In her work, she explores the creation of analog images and their materiality. Through experimentation, she shares personal, detail-oriented stories. Ieva often incorporates archival materials into her projects, using them to create photo collages.
Saulius Baradinskas is an award-winning film director currently living and working in Los Angeles and Vilnius. He received his master’s degree in Fine Arts and Directing in 2025 from AFI Conservatory. He has directed the short films Golden Minutes (2019) and Techno, Mama (2022), which was nominated for Best Short Film at the 2022 European Film Academy Awards. Of Concrete Kids, he says, “I still remember the fear of walking home in the late ’90s—it wasn’t really walking, it was surviving the block. Street fights, random teenage gang threats, and chaos were part of everyday life. It felt like the Wild West and East. Concrete Kids is a magical-realist musical drama about children who never learned to play in the playground—because they had to learn how to survive.”
Līva Klepere is an emerging Latvian film director who holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film Directing from the Latvian Academy of Culture and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree
in the “Movement. Image. Sound.” programme at the Art Academy of Latvia. During her studies, Līva worked on several audiovisual projects and short films, including the documentary short I’ll Knock, You’ll Talk, which was selected for the SHORT RIGA Test Screenings programme at the Riga International Film Festival in 2024. Her short film My First Funeral” won Best Student Film at the Latvian National Film Awards in 2026.
Robert Raska Ly studied cinema in university and specialized in directing, focusing on screenwriting and script development. He began his career as a film critic before traveling to Montreal, where he started shooting spontaneous, self-directed films.Upon returning to France, he joined a major advertising agency within the Publicis Group, while continuing to travel across Europe and create short films in countries such as Austria, Germany, Finland, Serbia, and Romania. In 2016, he moved to Estonia and began collaborating with the production company Kinommitus.
Eglė Razumaitė is a writer and director born in Vilnius in 1993. She graduated from Vilnius University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and holds a master’s degree in film directing from the LMTA Faculty of Theatre and Film. Her short film The Fall won the Lithuanian Association of Cinematographers’ Best Young Cinematographer’s Work prize in 2022 and was nominated for the Lithuanian National Film Award in 2023. Her short film Ootid (NYBFF 2024) was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Festival de Cannes in 2024.
EXTRA TEXT IF WANTED
Of Signal Path, she says, “My intention with this short film was to highlight the shift in
the sex industry and to ask: How do we redefine prostitution on screen? Despite societies moving toward legal and political recognition of sex workers, we still tend to stigmatize, discriminate against, and violate their rights. The moral argument against prostitution lost its validity at the end of the 19th century, yet we continue to evaluate other people’s choices based on our own fears about sex and the value of human life. The reality is very different today, as sexual services have deterritorialized into the private sphere with the rise of OnlyFans, TikTok, and Instagram… At the time of making this film, I found myself missing the voices of contemporary filmmakers who portray women and trans women doing sex work and engage with today’s discourse challenging conventional cinematic narratives of prostitution.”