Inese Boka-Grūbe

The film tells the story of an artist avoiding a confrontation with power and the artistic and personal consequences of this choice. A powerful historical drama on the true story of Maria Leiko, famous actress who late in her career has to decide between fame and love for her grandchild, between her ideals or the lies of Stalin’s totalitarian regime.

Lost in remotest part of Eastern Europe, Sam is a foreigner, searching for his biological father Lagzdins where a minor road accident leads to a chance meeting with a pig-farmer's daughter, who captures him and makes him a forced laborer on the farm.

It is 1991 in Latvia and nineteen-year-old aspiring cinematographer Jazis’s whole world is thrown into chaos as he is dragged into the people’s peaceful protests against the Soviet Army’s attempted takeover of power in his country.

Na União Soviética ocupada durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, István Semetka é um fazendeiro húngaro que serve como cabo em uma unidade especial de reconhecimento de grupos da resistência. No caminho para uma aldeia distante, sua companhia é atingida por um ataque inimigo. Após a morte do comandante do agrupamento, Semetka vai precisar superar seus medos e assumir a liderança do grupo, enquanto é arrastado para dentro de uma sucessão de eventos caóticos que fogem do seu controle.

The film focuses around Ina and Nikoloz, eleven and ten years old Georgian children who live in the 2008 Georgia-Russia war refugee village Tserovani. Unlike troubled adults who long for their old homes, the children are oblivious of the past. As they find fun and scary pastimes around the village, they try to reconstruct memories of their past, of where they came from. They don’t remember the war, but it continues to affect their present and future.

Līgatne river ferry crossing takes locals, tourists, passers-by and cars from early spring to the fall over river Gauja. It's the last of what were once many such 'rope ferries' across Gauja, but it remains more than an historical oddity and plays an important part in many lives. At just 12 square meters, the wooden ferry nevertheless encompasses an intriguing and sometimes surprising selection of what constitutes 21st-century Latvia.

15 August 1990. Viktor Tsoi, the Soviet Union’s most famous rock star, leader of the band Kino, a symbol of freedom and change, dies in an accident on a Latvian highway. The bus driver who was involved in the tragic accident will bring his body back to Leningrad. A party of mourners – Tsoi’s wife and her new boyfriend, his mistress, his producer, his young son and an obsessed photographer – are part of the trip back. This is going to be a long trip, the perfect occasion for an agonizing unravelling of love, jealousy, ambition, and greed.

Lituânia, 1948. A guerra acabou, mas o país ficou em ruínas. Unté tem 19 anos e é membro do movimento partidário que resiste à ocupação soviética. Eles não combatem de igual para igual, mas essa luta desesperada determinará o futuro de toda a população. Na idade das descobertas da vida, ele se depara com violência e traição. As fronteiras entre a paixão da sua juventude e a causa pela qual está lutando são bastante confusas. Mas Unté vai encarar de frente esse momento, mesmo que isso signifique perder a inocência.

Como uma jovem estudante soviética em 1978, Ieva não poderia ter previsto que uma visita de feriado a seu pai, Imants Lesinskis, então trabalhando na missão soviética nas Nações Unidas na cidade de Nova York, iria dividir irreversivelmente sua vida em duas. Envolvida em um jogo de espionagem sombrio, Ieva é forçada a deixar sua antiga vida para trás, para nunca mais ver sua mãe ou sua terra natal, a Letônia. Abrindo a cortina no mundo sombrio dos bastidores da Guerra Fria, este filme conta a história dramática de uma filha de seu pai agente duplo, explorando seu relacionamento contra o pano de fundo de eventos que têm suas raízes há mais de quatro décadas. Para se encontrar e entender o jogo do qual fazia parte, Ieva parte em uma viagem ao passado, confrontando segredos de família, mentiras e traição.

In the minds of people, Brussels is no longer a geographical location; it is now a myth-surrounded centre, where decisions are made regarding future life in Europe. The most brilliant minds from the European countries have convened in Brussels: former state leaders, highly-placed officials, advisors, translators and interpreters, as well as family members of all these people. Together, they comprise a sort of separate planet ruled by special laws and using new methods of communication; it is a place of a high concentration of power and all sorts of creature comforts. The anxiety following the 2016 attacks on Brussels has taken everyone by surprise, and the question whether to stay on Planet Brussels now comes up increasingly often. The Brexit news gave completely different kind of concussion to the commonly established center of Europe.

Hardly anyone would have predicted that Žanis Lipke would miraculously become a hero. He was a completely ordinary Latvian blue-collar worker. In order to be able to support his family under wartime conditions, he worked at the German military aviation warehouses and supplemented his income by smuggling at night. This film attempts to answer the question whether Žanis’ courage stems from his adventurous and daring spirit, stubbornness, or a sense of responsibility towards people in need.

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.

August 1942: Amidst the unimaginable suffering inflicted during the blockade of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht, an orchestra director was given an almost impossible task: to stage the premiere of Dimitri Shostakovitch's "Leningrad Symphony". The performance became a symbol of the brief triumph of culture over the barbarism of war.

The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia: Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Aleksandr and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported to Siberia. In her fight against cold, famine and cruelty, she only gains new strength through the letters she writes to Aleksandr, full of hope for a free Latvia and a better tomorrow.

A film about one of Europe's best young theatre directors, Latvian-born Alvis Hermanis, and his distinctive method, marked by a renunciation of classic dramatic material.

Three young men head to an isolated country house to shoot a film that they hope will bring them fame. They have no experience, but possess the will to change their lives. They make various attempts, but none seem to work. The team comes to a creative impasse, but the stakes are too high to give up. In hopes of drawing out their talents, they spend more and more time chipping away at each other. Previously hidden character traits come to light further complicating their relationship and the making of the film. Soon it's each man for himself. Just when the experiment seems utterly failed, one of them is discovered dead. It's not clear whether it's accidental, suicide or murder, but a real body in the scene satisfies - this could be the start of The Film.

Composers are regular people – they drive public transport, do sports, pay their bills. And still – they are very different as they are able to comprehend sound. The documentary film Sounds Under the Sun is an inspiring cinematic journey all over the world to meet some of the world-famous contemporary classical music composers. Visiting Alaskan forests, skyscrapers in Tokyo, and war zone in Georgia, the film gives a glimpse of how the composers share their struggle to create music from the moment of sonic creation till the moment when their music is interpreted for public (the film features composers Sir John Tavener from the UK, Leonid Desyatnikov from Russia, Giya Kancheli from Georgia, Dobrinka Tabakova from Bulgaria, John Luther Adams from the USA, and Ko Matsushita from Japan, and one of the world’s best youth choirs, Kamēr..., from Latvia).

Since Latvia regained independence in 1991, only a small number of all those who emigrated during the 1940s returned, though many of them had been waiting for the occupation to end. This is about the first generation of Latvian émigrés - those who came back, and those who chose to stay in the West.