Gunta Ikere

A five-year-old Yazidi boy is released after nearly three years in ISIS captivity. Profoundly disturbed, brainwashed and weaponized by the abuse he endured, he displays violent hatred towards the world around him, and particular revulsion for his mother, who was held hostage alongside him. Imad considers himself to be an ISIS fighter and lashes out against children and adults alike in this intense horror film about a child possessed by terror. As menacing as his behaviour is, it is a mere imitation of the humiliation and brutality he was moulded by. He did exactly as he was told by ISIS in order to survive, and now, surrounded by other survivors, the love of his family and help from a therapist, will he thrive?

Through the prism of three distinct characters, the 24-year-old director conveys an intimate and sensitive portrait of his own generation, wanderers looking for their place in the new and uncertain world. Dancer Tanya moves to Mississippi where she finds love with a paraplegic wheelchair basketball trainer who is more than 20 years her senior. App developer Tomass abandons the life he had before and becomes a world-travelling digital nomad. Avant-garde publisher Valters collects toilet seats in a poetically performative attempt to overcome past trauma.

Russian Federation, December 31, 1999. After President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of the country. From that day and for a year, Vitaly Mansky's camera documented Putin's rise to power. The story of a privileged witness. The harsh explanation of the reason why politics is the art of possibility of achieving the best with the support of many, but also of giving the worst in return.

An investigative look at the life of Latvia’s first foreign minister Zigfrids Anna Meierovics is also a chronicle of the inception of the statehood of Latvia. In a time of deep political turmoil, one man had to make the choices and sacrifices necessary to achieve the legitimacy of an entire country.

At the end of the Second World War, when the German army retreated from Latvia, it also took along 700 boxes of materials from Latvian museums. If not for a young woman named Mērija Grīnberga, the exhibition halls of many museums in Latvia would be empty today. Grīnberga was the only volunteer who in 1944 went along with the train carrying the treasures of Latvian art in order to return with them back to Riga. The German occupying forces tried to take them away; the Soviet occupation forces brought them back; Mērija completed her duty. As gratitude for her journey, Mērija was sacked from her job at the museum and incessantly viewed with suspicion.

Two border patrol agents come across a mysterious crashed van near the border of Latvia and Russia.

A film about a man who lives a parallel life to Soviet reality, and is both consciously and subconsciously a prickly and partially misunderstood citizen. He is poet Knuts Skujenieks, an exceptional personality not only in Latvia, but also within an international context, whose difficult struggle with the totalitarian regime reflects the true value of selfless work and unbending stance. The story, with its undercurrent of true humanity, allows a glimpse through Knuts Skujenieks’ life onto each of our fates.

A documentary about a 78-year-old Indian woman in New York who is the world's most passionate theatergoer. Nicki Cochrane has been seeing a play every day for more than 25 years, acquiring free tickets using a variety of ingenious means.

Vitaly Mansky’s intimate and insightful new documentary finds him crisscrossing the Ukraine in the wake of the Maidan uprising, which has left his relatives scattered on both sides of a highly charged and dizzyingly complex political situation.

Two young women, Lidija and Esmeralda, have become mothers at a tender age. At the moment, they’re at a point where neither their families nor the fathers of their children can help them. They live in a safe house that proves to be a place where they can receive the love, goodwill and peace they could not find before. This visceral film contrasts youthful naivety with hard-to-face facts in a story of longing, hope for love and difficult choices.

What kind of masters have we been in our independent country? A quarter of a century ago these four men were among those who voted for a free Latvia. 2015 was the 25th anniversary of the independence declaration. Deputies from the then Tukums district were among of the voters on that day, the 4th of May. A look from outside of Riga.

A high-school folk dancing group heads to Latvian School Youth Song and Dance Festival, an event that takes place every five years and is part of the Latvian national identity – this is the culmination point of five years of work. Away from their homes and parents, they spend seven days and nights together. They are 18 and have just graduated, and this seems to be the last idle summer of their lives. Dreams mix with boredom, silly jokes with serious conversations. Taking care of one another creates affection and grows into a collective power. There are thousands like them at the festival. Every individual sensation turns into a common celebration that becomes more than just a tradition.

An affirmative film about the price of risk and patriotism that is possible only for adventurists. Ivars Beitāns and his team do the impossible – in spite of obstacles they build a Latvian pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai, switch on the vertical wind tunnels and fly in sight of the whole world. But what is the price of the flight? What should one do to not let his whole life “pass by”?

Three elderly ladies - Maiga, Velta and Mrs.Tone - meet every Tuesday at a Culture House in a suburb of Riga to take part in rehearsals with 40-odd other ladies of the "Granny Choir". Some of them might be living more in the past than in the present, but there is one extraordinary feature common to all. Despite their age, low income and health issues, they appear to know how to grow old with dignity, a sense of humour and, as it seems, even joy.

A creative a portrait of Latvian luger and Olympic medal winner, Martins Rubenis, who won the first Latvia's Winter Olympic medal of the games in Turin in 2006. Apart from his success in sports, in the circles of contemporary alternative culture he is known as DJ Betons from the association Varka Kru (Varka – from Russian "boiling", Kru – from English "crew"). Like the medieval knight Lohengrin, Martins Rubenis arrives in his luge to fight a battle - with an adversary, with himself, with time and the world.

The story of Aivars Ritenieks, a father and a coach, brings together a passion for sports and a passion for family. He is determined to raise his sons to be Olympic athletes. Boxing is their life. They must fight many fights with the corruption in sports, bureaucracy, envy and ill wishes, the demons of their past and themselves. He’s a fighter who stands up against all odds and refuses to give up his principles... What is the price of victory?

From a refugee of the WWII to president – that's the story of Vaira Vike-Freiberga. Losing her motherland and coming back to it. Latvian, refugee, emigrant, wife, mother, professor, scientist, president.

Elvis is missing, and five of his classmates decide to go looking for him. While in hot pursuit of his tracks, the children are caught up in a whirl of exciting adventures, encountering all sorts of people and unusual situations.

In the ice-free months of the year Father Gennady captains a barge transformed into a floating Orthodox Church on a mission trip along the Volga-Don Canal to the remote Russian villages. At each port of call Father Gennady leads church services, distributes holy sacraments and hears confessions. But some unexpected circumstances cause the mission to suddenly take a rather different turn.

Beatrise is drifting in life. She has based her existence on unsuccessful relationships that have collapsed, like sand castles, one after the other. Forced to re-evaluate things, she realizes that she can only achieve harmony by learning to rely on herself, and not on illusory feelings or words.

The fates of the students involved in the Latvian educational system reforms and that of their teacher – the screenwriter and film director, Tālivaldis Margēvičs, are unusually intertwined. This leads to thoughts on various, current integration problems and on universal human values.

Members of a class of the 1980s hold an annual gathering. All together spend one night remembering the passions and hopes of youth and realising what has been achieved or missed.

From midnight until early morning you can travel to any suburb of Riga on a streetcar named Help, whose interior becomes a stage for life’s dramas, human exhaustion and hope. The streetcar is a democratic place where anyone can spend some time.

A story about the backstage of travelling Latvian puppet theatre "Maska". The group consists of three actors and a tiny bus. They travel around the county performing at clubs in the countryside, schools, kindergartens...

In Seda, a remote peat miners' town in Latvia, time seems to be frozen in the Soviet era. Built in 1952 and inhabited by a multi-ethnic workforce from different parts of the former USSR, it still preserves intact the inflated style of a Stalinist "shock work" construction project. Culturally Seda's people feel like a community apart. Their lingua franca is Russian, and their social life is a mixture of Soviet and Russian Orthodox traditions. They don't want the European Union, they want to live in their own state - the Marshland.

A documentary about Latvian immigrants in the USA.

A documentary about Indulis Ranka, a Latvian sculptor.

What draws thousands of people to leave everything behind and venture out into Siberian taiga, following Visarion, an ex-agent of the Soviet police who proclaims to be Jesus? The film tries to answer this question, showing the construction of the New Jerusalem, a resettlement «destined» to become the birthplace of a new civilization after the imminent apocalypse takes place.

At the end of 70ies, when individual houses were getting destroyed in the Latvian countryside to put everyone in Soviet kolkhozs, painters Inta Celmiņa and Edvards Grūbe bought a house in Vidzeme, far away from everybody. It was a new beginning for the house, and for the artists as well, who now lead a double life, spending winters in Riga, and summers - in their workshop in the countryside. It's a story about the classic values of Latvian painting and the environment that breeds it.

Late in a winter evening an amateur walker with his pals takes a short cut through a spooky cemetery. Everything would be fine except he stumbles. He wakes up in strange, haunted place, where time and space have lost the boundaries.

To be a harp player or a proffesional guard-for-hire? A young musician, at the very beginnig of his professional career. As many creative-minded young people in Latvia, he faces a dilemma: to devote his life to art or to change his profession and live a financially more guaranteed life. Young harp-player’s story and his creative road in the pragmatic world of today.

Aivars Freimanis' documentary consisting of small episodes from a trip to Kurzeme.

In a Latvian bakery, Aina breaks 40000 eggs per day by hand, and she has done this monotone job for almost 20 years.

A story about the Livonian (Liv) language going extinct, and about the people still trying to keep it alive.

An omnibus film consisting of ten parts, each directed by a different young director from the Latvian Academy of Culture. The unifying element of the ten shorts is the place where they take place - the airport. A lot can happen there - including a strike by a comet, a malicious attempt to break havoc by passengers, or an exploration of the old airport guard's house where not a lot has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film consists of the following parts: A Mishap (Nediena) by Arta Biseniece, Blurp (Šļurp) by Aija Bley, Alien Sky (Svešās debesis) by Viesturs Kairišs, 5 Versions (5 versijas) by Dzintars Krūmiņš, Comet (Komēta) by Māra Liniņa, Cleptomania (Kleptomānija) by Andis Mizišs, Alfredo's Poetry (Alfredo dzeja) by Igors Varenieks, Little Hand (Mazā roka) by Ilze Vidauska, Comet 2 (Komēta 2) by Anna Viduleja, and Life No. 2 (Dzīve nr.2) by Kristīne Želve.

The film’s protagonists Ieva and Apollon are former workers of a collective farm. Once they loved each other passionately. Yet it was in "another" life, the time of kolkholzs. The attempt to revive that love ends up in a tragedy. However the story goes on. The events around their burial are so intriguing that mass media raise them to the level of the United Nations.

The ferry crosses the river, transporting people from one shore to the other, from one country to another. It runs year round, never stopping. The footage was filmed on the Latvian-Belarussian border in the early 1990s - a time when the Soviet Union began to crumble and Latvia regained its independence.

A documentary about Jānis Bērziņš - a Soviet politician and military intelligence officer of Latvian ethnicity.