Writer
On June 14, 1941, 15,424 Latvians were deported from their country, including about 4,000 infants, children and adolescents. Many of the youngest died on the way, others died later from starvation, disease and over work in the Soviet camps. Some of the deported children survived and returned to Latvia, others remained in Siberia for their whole lives. Dzintra Geka's latest documentary "Road to Siberia, 1941" is an emotional account about those deportees who grew up in Siberia, far from their homeland.
A young couple of biologists and their two children move from Riga to a nature reserve where they're provided with an old country cottage. They start to repair the cottage and feel at home, but the former owner of the house suddenly returns from Canada. When he realises that the present inhabitants have kept the spirit of the place alive, he gives up his rights to the cottage. The film then concentrates on him coming to terms with his memories of his time as a guerilla, when he found his first love, his 'sister-in-arms', who betrayed him fifty years ago. The film also investigates the relationship between the young biologists and nature, and the process of reaching adulthood. The title of the film, The Nest, stands for the surroundings of living nature (the forest, the marshes, the coast) and more generally for the small fatherland that has to maintain its position among great powers such as Russia, Germany and America: countries that largely shape the fate of the characters.
