“The Soviet Story” is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now...
A charcoal on paper animation about a motorcycling circus bear who decides to leave the daily routine and takes off to the forest where his true happiness seems to dwell. Selected at 70+ film festivals. International Festival Premier at Clermont-Ferrand 34th Int'l Short Film Festival, France, 2012.
Four Latvian legionnaires are sentenced to death for deserting the German army. A Latvian girl heads to the German headquarters to try to free her beloved. In the few hours remaining before the execution a love triangle plays out between the girl, a German officer and the prisoner.
There is a popular Latvian folksong which begins with the phrase "I was singing out high on a mountain". The irony of it is that according to physical geography there are no mountains in Latvia. So what exactly is the place where the Latvians are "singing out"? It may be safely said that it's the same place where they are skiing. That's how we make mountains out of molehills...Snow-covered mountains, to be sure.
This documentary deals with faith, human aging, a struggle to fulfill your vision and above all - one particular building. In its poetical minimalism the film observes the construction of the new Latvian National Library, which has become a metaphor for a temple, a boiling-point for an entire nation.
Sixteen year old student Jānis has been given an interesting home work assignment – to draw his family tree and tell about it. The story of his family begins with his great-great-grandfather, who burned down the manors of German landowners during the 1905 revolution. My Family Tree takes us on a journey to various countries and political regimes, showing Jānis’s ancestors to be people with diverse fates and life stories. A rich Latvian trader, a red rifleman loyal to Lenin, a carpenter at the KGB and war refugees in Sweden are only a few branches on his family tree, and the boy has heard something unusal and unforgettable about each and every one of these people.
During a rainy day, an old Japanese man boards a ferry heading towards an unknown island. As he looks out over the water, the falling rain leads him back in time towards two moments from his past. The only constant is the rain, a woman and Mount Fuji.
A man continues to throw rubbish into the forest, to the great annoyance of both the forest ranger and the forest animals, but when he refuses to stop, more drastic measures have to come into use – and this is where the forest ranger luckily gets the help of a dog, a cat and a mouse, who have had enough of the litter lout.
Documentary about economic changes in Latvia in early 90-ties and banking crisis, viewed through fate of director's father: bank owner. After bank collapses he flew Latvia and is found only after 17 years.
The young Jekabs, Linda and Rihards enjoy the spring full of romance and bohemian way of life. The apple-trees are in blossom in Riga and the war unavoidably approaches.
In April 1969 Ilya (Eliyahu) Rips, then a young student of mathematics, tried to burn himself in a public square in Riga, Latvia protesting against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was stopped and eventually sent to a psychiatric hospital for two years. Thanks to international pressure from the mathematical community in 1972 he was allowed to emigrate to Israel.