Synopsis

“Who is my father? Was he really a criminal, who ruined the lives of four thousand people?“ Ieva Ozoliņa, a director from Latvia, has been asking herself these ruminating questions for a long time. In order to find the answers, she goes on a personal journey to find out more about her father. The documentary My Father the Banker is the result of year-long research. At the beginning of the film, only one thing’s for sure: that the economy professor Boriss Osipovs was involved in dubious trade which quickly made him into a millionaire shortly after the end of the Soviet Union. He started by selling western jeans, then founded a bank that was created to implode sooner or later. Osipovs was aware of the fatal consequences, but left his family in the dark. After an international arrest warrant was issued, the business man vanished into thin air. 15 years later, his daughter begins to pick up the pieces to reconstruct her father’s life. A hint leads her to a psychiatric hospital in Malaysia, where a patient strongly resembles Osipovs. But could he really be her father? And does she even want to see him again? Ieva Ozoliņa’s enthralling documentary creates a vivacious portrait of Latvia between communism and capitalism. It’s the captivating story of the winners and losers of an epochal system change.

Guests

IEVA OZOLINA

Ieva Ozolina
Director My Father the Banker
In Vienna: March 20-23