SYNOPSIS

"Where the Forest Dreams" is a slow descent into the edges of being — a place where the forest becomes not merely a mythological space, but an ancient consciousness through which all living things must pass to undergo their final initiation. Here, time no longer exists — only waiting. The forest is not a location; it is a sentient organism that watches, breathes, and consumes.

The central figure — human, creature, shadow — steps onto a path leading to the ultimate threshold. Their journey unfolds as a sequence of unsettling metamorphoses, where what is human is gradually shed. They become a nameless spirit, a mute priest, a faceless solar deity whose radiance blinds rather than redeems. Each form is only a mask, a temporary vessel fated for dissolution.

Death, in this world, is not tragedy but ritual. Not an end, but a revelation through emptiness. The figure dissolves into the darkness of the forest, into the reflection on water, into silence. They do not fall downward, but inward. The forest is not a witness — it is an accomplice. It does not release — it absorbs.

This video art is a meditation on oblivion, on the futility of escaping one’s nature, on the return to primordial darkness. There is no catharsis here. Only a lingering premonition that never passes. Here, where the forest dreams — you are already dead, you just haven't realized it yet.

The film was shot in Būriņu forest, in Jelgava — the same forest where, during World War II, the residents of the Ģintermuiža psychiatric hospital were executed en masse.

CREW

Director: Darja-Kazimira Zimina

Writer: Darja-Kazimira Zimina

Producer: Darja-Kazimira Zimina