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On the occasion of what would be her one hundred and third birthday, Spectacle is proud to present four recently restored films by Leida Laius, one of Estonia’s most renowned film directors. Laius’ cinema is propelled by stories of young, disaffected women. Laius’ richly textured, resilient women often face troubles in motherhood, poverty, friendship, and love. Seamlessly merging the personal and the political, Laius’ films exhibit her trust in both performer and audience to not flinch in the face of malaise.
Born near Saint Petersburg on March 26th, 1923, Laius volunteered for the Red Army during World War II. After the Soviet reoccupation of Estonia in 1944, Laius trained as an actress at the Estonian Theater Institute. She then graduated with a diploma in directing from the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow in 1962. Although her long career has been widely celebrated in Estonia for decades–she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Estonian Cultural Foundation in 1995, a year before her passing–Leida Laius’ films have flown under the radar in the United States for too long.
Special thanks to Triinu Keedus and the Estonian Film Institute.