MARINA ZVIDRIŅА
Writer-director
Who is Marina Zvidriņa?

When my reality crashed apart, it is art that became most essential—it reminded me who I am, gave me hope and energy to go forward.

That's why the beating heart of my stories is people in search of their identity, those who are not afraid to seek their own path, even if everything says, "Don't you dare!”

However, I see this world as a fairy tale—mystic, absurd, but always full of wonders. Through this lens, I explore reality because it is easier to speak of what matters the most.

My films are stories of strength, vulnerability, and the magic of everyday life. My characters are full of love, beauty, and a sense of humor. Getting through the toughest times, they change the world around them. Seeing happiness not as a luxury but as a salvation.

Who is Marina Zvidriņa?

When my reality crashed apart, it is art that became most essential—it reminded me who I am, gave me hope and energy to go forward.

That's why the beating heart of my stories is people in search of their identity, those who are not afraid to seek their own path, even if everything says, "Don't you dare!”

However, I see this world as a fairy tale—mystic, absurd, but always full of wonders. Through this lens, I explore reality because it is easier to speak of what matters the most.

My films are stories of strength, vulnerability, and the magic of everyday life. My characters are full of love, beauty, and a sense of humor. Getting through the toughest times, they change the world around them. Seeing happiness not as a luxury but as a salvation.

Films and audiovisual works

Audiovisual Art, 2025
Music Video, 2025
Climate Change motivating fantasy, 2023

Fairy tale, 2024

Horror Manifestation about women with depression, 2021
Adaptation of a poem In Place of a Letter by Vladimir Mayakovsky, 2019

Upcoming Projects and works in progress

BIO
EXHIBITIONS & ACHIEVEMENTS:
2025 FDLV (URST) Script Development Grant for Everlasting Love
2020 Female Films Forever community for female filmmakers — Founder
2017 HQ Club, personal exhibition
2011 EX-MAN'S SHIRT AS NEW DRESS FOR YOU (Producer) — 3,5m views on YouTube
2004 MAMM Silver Camera — contest finalist
2004 NIF, V Fashion Festival — Grand Prix in the Fashion Photographers contest
2003 MOW Int Biennale for Young Art, installation “INVASION” — space co-design
2002 Underground Défilé, art performance in Moscow subway
EDUCATION:
2025 Ella MAnzhin’s Film Development Course
2025 ESCAC / Assistant Director
2024-2025 ESCAC / Color Grading Digital
2024 Oxana Bychkova Directing School / Director in Feature Films
2023 KHS Academy / Film editing in different genres
2017 Self-discipline for Writers and Screenwriters / Screenwriting Workshop
2000-2001 International Design Union School of Photography / Film Photography
1999-2004 Moscow State University of Design and Technology / Costume Design
UNIVERSITY TEACHING:
2005-2010 Professor of Art at MSU of Design & Technology
The other biography
Or, let's say my life timeline squeezed in a couple of paragraphs:
Three females shaped my identity: grandmother, who was friends with the daughter of a shapeshifter; mom, who knows gypsie's dance; and Zinka, the parrot who drowned in a fish tank.
They gave me a sense of wonder early on and instilled in me a belief that the world was far more magical than it seemed.
Each of them taught me how to listen, laugh, mourn, and tell stories that carry all of that at once.

Alongside people, landscapes changed my language: the Kamchatka Peninsula and the 600 kilometers I walked through it in 2002; a three-month expedition to Western Tibet in 2004, where I was pioneering the Sutlej River; leaving my homeland and moving to Catalunya, wasn't that exotic, but immigration reformed me no less.
Every journey reshaped my sense of scale—geographic, emotional, artistic. I've learned to see the absurd and the divine in small things.
After people and places, the diseases came on the row: in 2018, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. That moment of collapse turned out to be a doorway. I've lived it over and finally let myself be a filmmaker.

I've lived the lives of an art magazine publisher, a fashion journalist, a baker, a cleaner, a tailor, a painter, a university professor, and a published writer. For years, I've been wearing those lives like Billy Milligan wore his personalities. I'm positive now that it was for collecting stories—they were something I stepped into.

To become a filmmaker, I went to life.

I'm of the disappearing Latgalian ethnicity; I'm of post-imperial culture; I'm of the immigrant background—a natural talekeeper and fairyteller.

I speak from the borderlands, between languages, in the middle of homes, past and future. Stories are the only place I've ever truly belonged. They are where I store my grief, my humor, my resistance—and where I invite others to revoke and remember.
I truly believe that it's not only the schools, but diverse life experiences, produce artists

I truly believe that

it's not only the schools, but diverse life experiences, produce artists

Can't wait to collaborate!
Feel free to share your thoughts and offers!
  • Marina Zvidriņa
    Writer-director
    E-mail: reina.marina.z@gmail.com
    Phone: +34 632 374 605
All photo, video, and text materials belong to ©MarinaZvidriņa and are used for demonstration purposes only.
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