The Last Years of Marija Leiko: New Film Depicts Actress’s Witnessing of Stalin’s Latvian Extermination

The new film is based on the life story of the famous theater and cinema actress Marija Leiko (1887-1938) and tells about the last years of her life, when the actress goes to the Soviet Union to take care of her granddaughter, thus becoming a witness and a victim of the extermination of Latvians initiated by Stalin.

Marija Leiko was a German theater and silent film actress of Latvian origin, who before the First World War played in the theater troupe of the Jonathan Society (Riga Workers’ Mutual Aid Society) and in the “Apollo” theater in Grīziņkaln. Later he studied at Vienna’s Imperial Academy of Musical and Dramatic Arts, worked in various German theaters.

In 1917, Leiko started filming in silent cinema, while simultaneously working in the acting troupe of the great director Max Reinhart in Berlin. Filmed with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, a classic of German cinema expressionism. After Hitler came to power, Leiko returned to Latvia in 1933, but after learning about the death of her daughter and the birth of her granddaughter in 1935, she took a train to the USSR, where colleagues in Moscow persuaded her to work for one season in the Latvian theater “Skatuve”.

The creative team of the film is director Dāvis Sīmanis, cinematographer Andrejs Rudzāts, screenwriters Dāvis Sīmanis, Magali Negroni, Tabita Rudzāte, film artist Kristīne Jurjāne, make-up artist Beata Ryabovska.

Starring: Olga Šepicka, Artūrs Skrastiņš, Įrts Ķesteris, Inese Kučinska, Vilis Daudziņš. Film composers: Paulis Kilbausks, Justus Štars, editing director Ieva Veiverīte, producers Gints Grūbe and Inese Boka-Grūbe.

2024-04-04 18:18:02


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