Seleckis employs a style characteristic of the "Riga School of Poetic Documentary," though adapted for a feature-length observational format.
The film is relatively obscure but documented on major film databases like the Baltic Sun at St Petersburg (2003) IMDb page Director & Producer : Valery Morozov. : Short documentary film. : Approximately 42 minutes. : Premiered in 2003 in Russia. : Available in Russian and English. Historical Context baltic sun at st petersburg 2003 documentary
Mikelėnaitė’s technique is deeply sensory. She lingers on textures: the peeling turquoise paint of a Baroque facade, the oily rainbow slick on the canal water, the sudden flash of a gold onion dome catching the midnight sun. The film rejects talking-head interviews. Instead, meaning emerges from juxtaposition. A group of neo-pagans, celebrating the summer solstice on the beach of the Peter and Paul Fortress, are cut against a battalion of uniformed cadets marching in lockstep. A drunk man recites Mandelstam—who died in a transit camp near Vladivostok—while a Mercedes with diplomatic plates honks at him to move. This is not a city reconciled to its past, the film suggests, but a city that has learned to live in the gaps between its many identities. Seleckis employs a style characteristic of the "Riga
"Baltic Sun at St. Petersburg" is a documentary film directed by the acclaimed Latvian filmmaker Ivars Seleckis. Rather than a historical or political exegesis of the city, the film serves as a sociological portrait of St. Petersburg, Russia, at the turn of the 21st century. It captures the city during a unique transitional period—three centuries after its founding by Peter the Great and roughly a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film explores the intersection of grand imperial history and the gritty, often harsh reality of modern urban life, painting a compassionate picture of the city’s inhabitants. : Approximately 42 minutes
Crucially, the documentary examines the cost of this transition. Interviews with local residents reveal a deep ambivalence. For the older generation, the White Nights recall the heroism and deprivation of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during World War II, a trauma seared into the city’s collective memory. For them, the “baltic sun” is a bittersweet reminder of survival. For the younger generation—the first to come of age entirely after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991—the endless daylight is an invitation. They are seen on rooftops, in underground clubs, and on the banks of the Neva, their faces lit by the same glow as their grandparents’ but reflecting different dreams: of travel, of wealth, of a world without borders. The film captures a quiet tragedy: the same light that reveals the future’s potential also exposes the fading photographs of a lost empire on a babushka’s mantelpiece.