(26.03.1923 – 06.04.1996)

Leida Laius was one of Estonia’s most prominent cinema directors, whose work vividly reflects the development of Estonian film art. She graduated from the Estonian SSR State Institute of Theatre and also completed the directing program at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK). Laius was a strong player in the masculine film world of the time and her feature film legacy forms a very unified whole. Almost all of her films stand out for strong acting performances and similar themes reoccur: strong female stories, mysterious relations between husband and wife, challenges of being a wife and mother etc. These themes of a woman’s life and development in Leida Laius’s films are universal and comprehensible to people all around the world.