Algis Arlauskas retrospective  

Since his birth, Ruben has had cerebral palsy. Thrown from one soviet orphanage and boarding school to another throughout his childhood and adolescence, Ruben survived and decided to search for his mother. What is she like? Did she leave her own son voluntarily? Or maybe she was lied to that the boy hadn’t survived? Even more questions arise when it becomes clear that Ruben was born in a Kremlin hospital and that his grandfather was a former First Secretary of the Spanish communist party. All the questions are answered during the film-trip, little by little, after visiting Madrid, Paris, Moscow and Prague and researching archives with the help of private detectives. The separate film episodes are connected by Ruben’s voice off camera, reading a letter to the mother he longed for and did not know. 

Ruben David González Gallego described his hard handicapped orphan life in the shocking book “White on Black”, which was awarded with the Russian Booker Prize.

 Algis Arlauskas Pinedo was born in 1957, in Moscow. After graduating from the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute Arlauskas started working in Moscow Young Generation Theatre. His acting career in cinema started when he was fifteen-years-old. Arlauskas was one of the leading actors in a very popular comedy at the time “Sportloto-82” by Leonid Gaidai. When acting started to seem to not be enough, Arlauskas graduated from filmmaking studies at Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. As a director and a screenwriter, Arlauskas made more than twenty documentary films, two feature films and several short films. In 1991 he moved to Bilbao, Spain. Arlauskas is one of the founders of the cinema school “Ánima Eskola”, which he is the head of to this day. Arlauskas Pinedo received a Sergei Eisenstein award, also won grand prix at the international cinema festival Cinema without Barriers.

Selected Filmography

Madmen’s Conspiracy , 2016
Patria, 2011
Winner, 2008
Country Barber , 2006
Letter to My Mother , 2001
To Live and Die in Russia , 1991–1994
Travelling the Distance , 1990
Non-personal file , 1988
Touch , 1987