Acting
A small village on the Baltic coast. Three guys are trying to fulfil their lives by drinking beer, killing time and picking up fights with neighboring villagers. Andža 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.
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.
Closing day of the season in the boarding house at the Vietinghoff Palace in the province of Latvia. Here the material world and atmosphere of the 1930s are reconstructed as fully as possible. According to the rules of the institution, guests must abandon all their means of digital communications. And this is what they are looking for: to disappear, at least for a while, and become inaccessible to the outside world. The lingering summer heat drags the guests into an insane frenzy where surrealistic and grotesque situations build up an ambiguous comedy.
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.
Mr. Schmidt, a young man who is recovering from a recent nervous breakdown, arrives at a country manor. As he waits for the governess Mrs. Rosenbaum, Schmidt is scared by the gardener but then meets a bored, young woman, Vera, who kindly accompanies him through the house. Vera tells Schmidt about a great tragedy. Precisely three years ago, members of her aunt’s family passed away, but the bodies were never found. Mrs. Rosenbaum does not believe in the death of her relatives and continues to wait for their return. Coming close to madness, Mr. Schmidt escapes from the mansion, and the missing family members return from an actual hunting expedition. As it turns out, Miss Vera makes up legends because of boredom.
A young boy's memoir of his childhood. If they are memories at all. The strained relationship with his father has never been resolved, and it has followed Mundis like a black ghost throughout his life. Will Mundis resolve his differences with his father and find love in this man's world?
Alice von Trota returns to her father’s manor in Latvia in 1919 to sell it and start a new life. She meets the hostile resistance of the local workers and discovers she has been lured into a carefully tailored trap set by a demonic lawyer, a decadent underground organisation and its necrophile leader. While escaping the clutches of her “helpers”, she meets some silent-cinema enthusiasts and learns to use the cinematograph as a tool for healing and self-discovery, as a weapon against her enemies and as a way to create a masterpiece.
