Julie Vinten

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.

An observational reflection on the body and existing in one’s social as well as physical “skin”. “To break out of their traumas and the ingrained ideas of normality and the fictional ideal of femininity, and to make their bodies truly their own – this is the goal of two young women who use their bodies as a tool of protest and a work of art,” writes the filmmaker.

Twelve uncomfortable, deeply personal and painful stories by women who have had an abortion are read, told and 'experienced' by six male actors. Does that make a difference? Will the society listen now?

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.

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.

"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.

By chance, Louise and Kaspars meet on a trip to celebrate Midsummer’s Eve. She’s running away from annoying neighbours and general sense of pointlessness; he’s running away from a failing marriage. They’re both young, talented, and lost; they both want to become artists; they’re both unsure how to go on about their lives. Maybe that’s why their shared trip turns into a strange, sometimes funny and sometimes complicated journey through a relationship over the course of three years.

A potato farmer connects with the injured alien that crash-landed in his field, much to the chagrin of the local authorities.

The code to unlocking this feature documentary is 1949, the year the director was born, and also the year of the return of Soviet repressions to Latvia. The film tells a very personal story against the background of less visited historic events – the death of director’s father due to the KGB repressions, which is closely linked to the devious game Soviet Latvia’s KGB played against Swedish-British-American spy agencies.

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?

A documentary about two 13-year-old girls, both obsessed with fashion and developing their personal style. One of the girls lives in a small town in Latvia, the other one - in Norway. How do their surroundings influence their acts of self-expression? And how do their mothers cope with the idea that their little daughters are becoming adults?

In 1946, a group of Latvian Brazilian Baptist missionaries arrived to Rincon del Tigre (“Jaguar’s Corner”), in the backwoods of Bolivia, to preach God’s word to the Ayoreo Indians. After sixty years of selfless work in a largely hostile environment, something seems to have gone terribly wrong. Habituated to living under the protective wings of the mission, the Ayoreos seem neither to be willing to support themselves and start living on their own, nor able to return to their traditional way of life in the jungle. Dressed in second-hand clothes, they are stranded in the backwoods of Western-style civilization, with no particular way to go.

Latvian artist Gustavs Klucis embraced the technological revolution of the early 20th century and applied it to his art, becoming a classic of Russian constructivism. He created photo-montage and Lenin’s public image, and became the most important Soviet artist. Killed by Stalin’s regime, his artistic career poses many unanswered questions. This documentary reveals many secrets and intimate moments of his dramatic personality – the unequal duel between the Artist and the Power.