The Most Famous
FILM DIRECTORS from Latvia
This page contains a list of the greatest Latvian Film Directors. The pantheon dataset contains 1,581 Film Directors, 3 of which were born in Latvia. This makes Latvia the birth place of the 48th most number of Film Directors behind Bosnia and Herzegovina and Philippines.
Top 3
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Latvian Film Directors of all time. This list of famous Latvian Film Directors is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Sergei Eisenstein (1898 - 1948)
With an HPI of 76.11, Sergei Eisenstein is the most famous Latvian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 112 different languages on wikipedia.
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (22 January [O.S. 10 January] 1898 – 11 February 1948) was a Soviet film director, screenwriter, film editor and film theorist. He was a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1925), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958). In its 2012 decennial poll, the magazine Sight & Sound named his Battleship Potemkin the 11th-greatest film of all time.
2. Rosa von Praunheim (1942 - )
With an HPI of 49.99, Rosa von Praunheim is the 2nd most famous Latvian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Holger Bernhard Bruno Mischwitzky (born Holger Radtke; 25 November 1942), known professionally as Rosa von Praunheim, is a German film director, author, painter and one of the most famous gay rights activists in the German-speaking world. In over 50 years, von Praunheim has made more than 150 films (short and feature-length films). His works influenced the development of LGBTQ+ rights movements worldwide. He began his career associated to the New German Cinema as a senior member of the Berlin school of underground filmmaking. He took the artistic female name Rosa von Praunheim to remind people of the pink triangle that homosexuals had to wear in Nazi concentration camps, as well as the Frankfurt neighborhood of Praunheim where he grew up. A pioneer of Queer Cinema, von Praunheim has been an activist in the gay rights movement. He was an early advocate of AIDS awareness and safer sex. His films center on gay-related themes and strong female characters, are characterized by excess and employ a campy style. They have featured such personalities as Keith Haring, Larry Kramer, Diamanda Galás, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Judith Malina, Jeff Stryker, Jayne County, Divine and a row of Warhol superstars.
3. Fridrikh Ermler (1898 - 1967)
With an HPI of 45.51, Fridrikh Ermler is the 3rd most famous Latvian Film Director. His biography has been translated into 16 different languages.
Fridrikh Markovich Ermler (Russian: Фри́дрих Ма́ркович Э́рмлер; born Vladimir Markovich Breslav; 13 May 1898 – 12 July 1967) was a Soviet film director, actor, and screenwriter. He was a four-time recipient of the Stalin Prize (in 1941, twice in 1946, and in 1951). After studying pharmacology, he joined the Czarist army in 1917 and soon took part in the October Revolution on the side of the Bolshevists. Captured and tortured by the White army, he only became a full party member at the end of the Civil War. From 1923 to 1924 Ermler studied at the Cinema Academy. In 1932 he took part in creating one of the first Soviet talkies – the movie Vstrechny (The Counterplan). He also was one of the founders of the Creative Association KEM (together with E. Ioganson). In 1929-1931 Ermler studied at the Communist Academy and wrote for the newspaper Kino. He also became the chairman of the Russian Association of Revolutionary Filmmakers. In 1940 he became the director of the Lenfilm studio. Between 1941 and 1944, he worked at the Central United Film Studio of Feature Films (TsOKS) in Alma-Ata (now Kazakhfilm Film Studio). He died on 12 July 1967, in Komarovo. A memorial plaque was placed on the house in Leningrad where he lived from 1930 to 1962.
Pantheon has 3 people classified as film directors born between 1898 and 1942. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living film directors include Rosa von Praunheim. The most famous deceased film directors include Sergei Eisenstein and Fridrikh Ermler. As of April 2022, 1 new film directors have been added to Pantheon including Fridrikh Ermler.
