Ernests Ansons

Martin has fulfilled the European dream: he has a beautiful spouse, a nice house and a well-set business. When he turns 40, he starts to ask: is this all there is, and what’s next? An existential comedy/drama about success, sense of freedom and the meaning of life.

Three relationships deconstructed. The Red Couple choose to pretend to be harmonious for the last three days of living together. The Green Couple's three days are full of uncertainty and nervousness, waiting for the other to reveal themselves intimately. The Yellow Couple, two colleagues, will lose themselves in the workplace romance genre trying not to fall in love.

Through six very different families, documentary “The Land” shows the variety of the countryside in the 21st century, the contradictions of countryside living as well as illusions about farmer’s life. There are various reasons why our protagonists chose to live in the homesteads, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Some were done with spending too much time in an office, traffic and living a virtual life, they wanted real, tangible things. Some have moved to countryside by their own choice, but some by predisposition of their families. But what unites them all - they aspire for the stability provided by their own land and house. Together with our protagonists, we will spend one year’s cycle of farmer’s life, that will start with the spring sowing and finish with the autumn harvest and land preparation for the next year.

Spring 2021. A cinephile invites you on an intimate trip through the last surviving cinema houses in Latvia. This documentary essay, shot on super 8mm, opens the locked doors to picture houses during a Covid-19 lockdown, perhaps the most difficult time in the history of physical cinema space.

Ieva has been an obedient granddaughter for years – choosing a safe career in a bank as her grandmother wanted. Her mother left the family years ago when she had to look for work abroad. That has made ties between Ieva and her grandmother especially tight. Dissatisfaction with the constant adaption to the material world is flickering under the surface and Ieva lives her dreamlife with her friends. She plays the keyboard in a girl band and stays out late. When Ieva decides to have a provocative tattoo on her arm made, her grandmother goes completely nuts.

A journey into the complex world of today, full of hopes, desires, and fears for the present. The film invites us to follow a voice whose thoughts and doubts about the present become a meditation accompanied by works of art. The film features all the artworks exhibited at the second Riga Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA2). Reminiscent of a Tarkovskyan dystopia, the united ecosystem of living nature, a disused power plant, an abandoned paintball field, warehouses, flocks of birds, cruise ships and railway tracks, makes the film’s space its own metaphor for the collapse of Soviet ideals and capitalist hopes.

Ilze Burkovska, a little girl who is obsessed with stories of World War II and will be a filmmaker in a distant future, lives in Latvia under the totalitarian boot of the Soviets and the ominous shadow of the many menaces and horrors of the Cold War.

Three best friends have to attend funeral, organize a stag party and to be on time for wedding. Personal problems and close time draw three friends into crazy adventures.

The routine of an online computer game player is disrupted by another player. The main character abandons the rules of game to retain the new friendship.

"If a person doesn't go to church anymore, then the church should go to them," says Rinalds, a calm, smiling, young man with a good sense of humor. He is a priest from a small village in Latgale, Latvia's easternmost and poorest region, and the documentary Prīsters (The Priest) follows the routines of his daily life, his thoughts of life and religion and why he chose this path for himself.

A year has passed since the turbulent events of the 1905 revolution. The secret police has almost eradicated the network of social democratic fighters. Only one group continues fighting and a bold assault on a factory cash desk is being planned. A low ranking fighter Grey is assigned to lead the operation. Meanwhile, Grey starts an affair with a young poetess Violet and gets to know the flamboy-ant crowd of decadent artists and writers. Inspired by Violet Grey takes a look at revolution from a different perspective. Meanwhile Violet gradually gets involved in the dangerous world of revolutionary fighters. November 1906 in Riga is still remembered as a month of crazy bohemia and violent terror.

Nils and his two best friends are invited to a 25 year reunion for their student years. Nils is given the task of holding the main speech. This comes at a bad time. He is troubled with his self consciousness, eyesight, hemorrhoids and age bothering him.

When the daughter of the Sun and the Moon is stolen, desperate parents call people to get their baby back. Helpers are given only three days: if at that time, the Sun's daughter will not be found, she will lose her strength and become an ordinary girl. A journey of danger and adventure, which teaches everyone not only to be brave and resourceful, but also helpful. The Latvian animated film is based on folklore motifs.

Two twenty-somethings from Latvia meet in the south of France. Leo studies restoration, Anna has lived in Marseille for some time and works as a hairdresser. Also, she looks very much like the image of a girl that Leo has uncovered restoring an altar painting.

Harry Berzins is abducted by aliens. Traumatic experience gained is on a foreign planet, where the gray race rules and makes Berzins feel excluded. The only creature he believes is the odd Ufologist Vilma Kavace. While Vilma uses Berzins as an alien attraction bait, his mother, impregnated with a Latvian sperm on another planet, carries his child. Shieet.

The To Be Continued documentary follows lives of five children throughout their first school year. Kārlis's family is firmly rooted in the Latvian countryside. Gleb's grandparents came to Latvia only in the Soviet period. Zane's family are first-generation urban-dwellers. Anastasija's family moved from the city to the countryside. Anete's mum lives and works in England. The film explores how these choices made by adults are reflected in a child's thinking.

Summer, 1989. City girls, Paula and Laura, spend their summer holidays in a small town with their cousins, Maija and Linda. Four girls, left unattended, enjoy freedom, imitate the life of adults, plunge into reckless adventures and get into trouble. Based on true events, nine-year-old Paula’s story of growing up is set against the background of time when Lat-via made her first steps towards independence.

An actress faces a difficult choice when her teenage daughter gets unwell right before the opening night of a show.

A psychological thriller about a middle-aged intellectual who, in an attempt to restore his reputation in his wife’s eyes, accidentally commits a murder. As time passes, he begins to see a link between the deceased, his wife’s pregnancy and the mysterious blackmailer who is forcing him to act against his will.

After fighting over toys, two kids – brother and sister – experience adventurous yet dangerous journey in the magic kingdom under the sand box, where, accompanied by their extraordinary nanny the witch, they learn about the power of companionship.

We have sex in Latvia! A light comedy about building relationships - with passion and funny misunderstandings. All characters of this movie are in desire for flirt - be it at a swingers' party or during a sudden encounter with a beautiful stranger on the balcony.

Trains and railroad tracks are the unifying elements in this found footage film made out of fragments from feature films produced in Latvia from 1958 to 1989. It’s a cinematic journey into the world of dreams, filled with memories, desires, and the incessant quest for the ever-elusive happiness. The trains have played an important role in the history of cinema. A lot of interesting phenomena are linked with trains – locomotion, changes, an opportunity to think, dynamics, force, sense of something important… It helps to cross the usual boundaries.

Deniss is a Russian-speaking young man working at a fast food chain and spending his days in a small, gloomy apartment where all the things still remind him of his dead grandmother. Once a week he takes the stage, becoming a stand-up comedian. His jokes come from his life, which might be called dull as well as bleak, and, as he puts it, his ‘uninteresting biography’.

A rookie policeman is left alone in a private clinic to guard a comatose suspect of World War II crimes. His shift is long over, yet nobody comes to replace him. However, the youngster is determined not to leave his post until he gets permission from his authorities to do so. Lack of sleep, loneliness, hunger and the persistence to serve his duty turn the young man into a ticking time bomb at the very wrong time. He must decide how far he can go guarding this suspect who is hated to death by everyone.

The closed microcosm of garage co-ops, where the socio-economic environment has blended with personal space, provides a step back in time. Men are still boys, but their tinkering is both the trade and hobby of individual entrepreneurs, since self-exploitation as leisure time activity is a time capsule where neoliberalism has enclosed the postindustrial proletariat. Inventors, geniuses, crazy scientists, and men with golden hands - you will find them in garages.

Inspired by Alber Camus’s novel “The Plague”, this absurd drama tells a story of a single apartment. Its interior and inhabitants are constantly changing, their time and space relations are uncertain, but they all experience the fatality of the close presence of death.

The story of a small Minotaur who tries to find playmates in the endless labyrinth while his Dad is at work. He only manages to meet mythological characters, busy with their own ambitions.

The old gardener works all day in harmony with nature’s rhythms and the wisdom of the ancient Latvians. His happiness and fulfillment is a garden that no longer belongs to him, but he feels like it does due to his large contribution to it. He speaks to the garden, and it responds, giving him shelter and a rich harvest. Autumn arrives and there is much work, more than the gardener can handle. The young homeowners, desiring to make the gardener’s life easier, hire a new gardener. The old gardener’s love of the garden and his unwillingness to share it with anyone else leads him to make an inevitable decision to stay in the garden of his family forever. This is a poetically symbolic story about disappearing time, the land and modern reality.

Mikhail Tal. From a Far is a documentary exploring the unpredictable and tragic life of the genius world chess champion Mikhail Tal, Riga's native son. Mikhail Tal becomes the youngest world chess champion at 23. The same year, he was diagnosed with incurable kidney disease and given only one year to live. Through sheer will and reckless abandon he managed to live another 40 years, filling them with a string of remarkable chess successes, unexplainable failures, amorous conquests and a life-threatening game of cat and mouse with the KGB.

Brainstorm is the best-known Latvian band in Europe. They started out 25 years ago, when most of them were in the same class at school. That was the time when people in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia joined hands to create the Baltic Way, and the fall of the Berlin Wall became a symbol of the hunger for freedom. The young men listened to U2, the Scorpions and Roxette and dreamed of becoming famous. Now Brainstorm is famous in Russia as well. The musicians are Latvians who live in Latvia, but they reap profits in Russia. Brainstorm has experienced the most interesting and intense period of modern European history. This period has also been a dramatic time for the band itself.

Three friends have lost a member of their group and go looking for him. It appears he might be the man in one of the toilet cubicles...

Ģirts and his friend plan an excursion to a mystical place, the abandoned Potassium Park. In order to get the family car, Ģirts lies and says he is going fishing, so his parents compel him to take his younger brother along. Ģirts’ friend backs out, and he is forced to go fishing after all. Bitter about the failed plan, Ģirts is mean, but his brother’s joy over the first fish caught is a self-revelation of his pervasive injustice towards his younger brother. As a gift, Ģirts shows him the secret entrance to Potassium Park. The brothers head off on an exciting foray through the abandoned and mysterious structures, until they accidentally uncover a box of explosives that tests their newly-developed camaraderie.

A little boy pulls out one Martian toy from a vending machine and it turns into a real alien who takes him to his planet, where he is surronded by the toys from the vending machine, but much bigger.

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.

Lonely, 45 year-old worker Kasandra has just received a lethal diagnosis from her doctor. She goes to her high school reunion, confused, and is faced with phantasmagorical events that completely shatter her daily routine. Kasandra flees from the city. In the forest, she is engulfed by a river and brought to a secluded sea shore. Alone and over time Kasandra experiences an unusual healing and rebirth.

The film is based on true events, it tells the stories of two outstanding personalities of the 20th century – Sergei Eisenstein and Isaiah Berlin, who were both born and spent their childhood in Riga but soon had to leave the city. The film follows the lives of the two characters during the turbulent first half of the 20th century, telling how one of them becomes “the greatest film director of his generation” in the totalitarian Soviet Union, and the other “the greatest thinker of his generation” in liberal Great Britain.

A business executive lays off hundreds of harbor workers after they go on strike. He and his wife plan to escape the stress by taking an Italian vacation. On the evening before the trip, one of the fired workers, dressed in an orange harbor worker safety jacket, slips into their home. Although his immediate actions reveal a murderous intent, revenge is only the initial step.

I was nine years old when my mother took me away from home for the first time – to Leningrad. For those of us behind the Iron Curtain, this was a Big Trip. Later, I couldn’t remember anything I had seen or done except for a large, colourful tourist bus from Switzerland – the only object with which I wanted to be photographed. That bus symbolized the world for me – large and beckoning, full of travel and adventure. Now I am 35 and I’ve been to 39 countries. 20 years of wandering around the world with a camera makes one wonder – why on earth do I want to travel?

As every evening, the Ghost goes to work – to haunt and frighten. Even in his worst nightmares the Ghost hadn’t imagined he’ll meet such a ‘terrifying’ girl who is not afraid of him. But it happened...

It is nice and fun to have a cat or some other pet at home to play with. The trusting cat also thought to himself: it's so great to have a home... Until the moment it found itself trapped in a bag, somewhere out on the street, all alone, left to it's faith. Nevertheless - all is well that ends well!

A film that depicts the mentality of the inhabitants of a small village on the Baltic coast. Three guys are trying to fulfill their life's by drinking beer, killing time and picking up fights with neighboring villagers. The main character Andzha is trying to convince his girlfriend to marry him. The sudden arrival of his elder brother Guido starts a series of events where main roles a played by elevated self-esteem, pride and cravings for love that is stronger than death.

It's Sofka's birthday and she gets a lamp which is the beginning of her dream. But there's a misunderstanding and someone takes Sofka’s lamp away. Because of a friend’s principles of justice, Sofka winds up in a criminal situation.

The documentary draws a portrait of an opera director who is staging Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre. He is torn between the tragicomic routine of an opera house and his own perception of Wagner and the Ring cycle. The film witnesses the director’s drama in maintaining the fragile link between a well-constructed performance and his own vision that lies within the music and the narrative, and is seen as German expressionism-like nightmares.

Following an ad in the paper, Ilze leaves her native village to become an actress. She fails the audition, but her pride won't let her return home. Her boyfriend is skeptical about her ambitions, so he comes after her to bring her back home. The plot evolves around their relationship as they pretend and lie to each other trying to end the emotional stand-off.