Veteran actors from the 3 Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - gather at a castle in Latvia to receive awards for their roles as Nazi villains in propagandist Soviet war films. They reminisce about the films that made them famous throughout the USSR, but also stigmatized the Baltic countries as Nazi sympathizers in the eyes of many Russians - a misconception that is nowadays exploited by the Russian media, desperate to label the Baltic countries as a fascist haven.
A Humble Life is certainly true to its title, a documentary study of the day-to-day world of Umeno Mathuyoshi, an old woman who lives in an isolated mountain house in the Nara prefecture in Japan.
A young woman agrees to model for an artist as Virgin Mary. His strange influence triggers her repressed sexual urges causing her to have delusions and nightmares about spiders and other grotesque imagery.
While detained in one of the Soviet Gulags (prison work camps), Maria fell in love with and had a child by one of the camp guards. However, in order to save her baby, she was manipulated into a situation where she had to betray her lover. The main attraction of this film is the clear depiction it gives of the harsh conditions of life in these infamous camps.
It is the post-war era on the Latvian border, and the Lithuanian girl Maryte has located her relative, Antanas. Having been a farmhand on a rich farm as well as the lover of the owner's wife, upon his return from the war Antanas hopes to gain as much as he can from the collapse of the old world. The wife's daughter, Ausma, has since grown up and seems much more desirable to Antanas than his former lover. The historical situation makes for a tense atmosphere, because in the nighttime partisans may emerge from the forest, while during the daytime everyone must be careful to follow the new rules of life under Soviet rule.
In the Lithuanian village of Lietuvos, a farmer brings his sheltered nephew, Joni, to the rich Bani. By biting the prospective host's hand, the teenager gains the nickname of "the devil's seed."
