A biopic of Rainis (born as Jānis Pliekšāns), a Latvian poet, playwright, translator, and politician, whose works had a profound influence on the literary Latvian language, and the ethnic symbolism he employed in his major works has been central to Latvian nationalism.
“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...
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.
The action takes place in Kurzeme in the 17th century. The Duke of Courland, the King of Poland and the German barons wants power over the Latvian people. Farmers are the biggest victims of this power struggle.
Action takes place in Latvia in 1920-thies. Entrepreneurial Edgar Ceplis establish joint-stock company, to produce and export clay bricks. He attracts to project many investors in the hope of the promised huge profits. Soon Ceplis gets enamored to his office typist, but the business stays neglected, and it turns out that the selected clay is not valid for export bricks. While no one has learned, Ceplis quickly changes his plans and puts young officer in charge of company. A strory about the destructive human features: envy, greed, selfishness, cynicism, cruelty.
The film dramatizes November 11, 1919- a crucial date in the battle for Latvian independence. A year after the end of the official hostilities of WWI, a renegade German general and troops remain outside the Latvian capital. Latvian riflemen, most of them inexperienced volunteers, somehow managed to defeat a larger, better-armed force of German and Russian mercenaries.