Armands Začs

A story about Emīlija Benjamiņa, the “queen of the press” in interwar Latvia, whose wealth and tragic fate have since become folklore. The film’s narrative covers the period from the beginnings of Emīlija’s magazine Atpūta (Recreation), to her arrest and slow demise in a train en route to Siberia. The most prominent clairvoyant of the time - Eugene Fink’s prophecy that Emīlija would die from starvation in a foreign land (which served to be true) weaves through the narrative as a red thread. With this strong woman at the centre of the story, the film shows Latvian society in all its richness and gives the audience the opportunity to meet many well-known historical figures.

Liv's estranged alcoholic dad is about to die. The doctors at the hospital make no sense. Her boyfriend is about to have a midlife crisis. Her washing machine is broken. She thinks she'll be fine as these are regular adult problems. Spoiler alert: she won't.

A giant girl lives in a wild rural environment. When the modern world enters this isolated Russian Old Believer milieu, the girl is taken away and dragged into the world of professional sports. The aim does not differ much from that of a circus in the Middle Ages – to entertain audiences and exploit the limits of people’s mental and physical abilities. But the girl proves to have unbelievable willpower and athletic talent. She is able to adapt and triumph in this new world. This is the story of the famous basketball player Ulyana Semyonova.

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.

29-year-old Ilona and her boyfriend have just moved into a new apartment in a block of flats. When the building’s renovation begins soon afterwards and she befriends Oleg, one of the Ukrainian construction workers, her idyllic notions of a fulfilling life as she approaches thirty start to crumble, like the old plaster on the walls.

The brilliant young physicist Henrik and his fellow students develop a fusion reactor that produces endless clean energy, potentially saving Earth from environmental catastrophe. The reactor, however, is harnessed for commercial use, and the consequences for the planet and society are devastating. By the year 2064, the world has been ravaged by climate change. The UN succeeds in developing a form of time travel that can return a person's memories and personality to the moment of birth. Henrik is sent back to the past in an attempt to prevent the escalation of a catastrophe before it is too late. Something goes wrong and Henrik is forced to begin his mission from a very different starting point to the one he is used to.

A comedy in six series about two lonely seniors, Archie and Nellie, who try to keep finding new challenges and pleasures in life.

A Latvian tragicomedy about a young artist who bears witness to the dramatic political upheavals of the WWII era. As brutal regimes come and go, his country, his village, his people, and even his heart are swept up in the inexorable currents of history.

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.

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.

A young director, who sits in front of a commission defending a film based on her own experiences with sex and relationships, is continually confronted with questions about why she’s making the movie. The answer doesn’t come easy… Linde took on a difficult task for her short film.

Seven versions of Riga, the city on the Baltic Sea, and its features as seen by outstanding European film directors: Sergei Loznitsa (The Old Jewish Cemetery), Ivars Seleckis (On Ķīpsala), Audrius Stonys (Riga Boats), Jaak Kilmi (Littering Prohibited!), Jon Bang Karlsen (Cats in Riga), Rainer Komers (Daugava Delta), and Bettina Henkel (Theatre Street 6).

Elsa falls in love with a quadriplegic genius, her patient Nicola, whose mansion hides a secret – Nicola is obsessed with the creation of an artificial intellect. His creation, named Anna, stops at nothing to keep her master just for herself.

Julius, who devours comic books and vampire stories, has a lively imagination. Julius meets Arnold Cautious, who lives in an abandoned house on the outskirts of town and introduces himself as a degenerated, strawberry juice-drinking vampire. Julius and Cautious become friends. Together they try to make the Lucky Stone, the recipe for which is in Cautious' grandmother's secret recipe book. Julius wants to give the stone to his estranged parents so they can rediscover their common happiness. Julius and Arnold's laboratory attempts to make the Lucky Stone falter badly time and time again, but they stubbornly pursue their quest for happiness.

As a young Soviet student in 1978, Ieva could not have predicted that a holiday visit to her father, Imants Lesinskis, then working in the Soviet mission at the United Nations in New York City, would irreversibly split her life in two. Entangled in a dark spy game, Ieva is forced to leave her former life behind, never to see her mother or her homeland of Latvia again. Pulling back the curtain on the shady behind-the-scenes world of the Cold War, this film tells a daughter's dramatic story of her double-agent father, exploring their relationship against the backdrop of events which have their roots over four decades ago. In order to find herself and understand the game she was part of, Ieva sets out on a journey to the past, confronting family secrets, lies and betrayal.

Five children started school in different parts of Latvia in 2015 and we followed them through their first schoolyear in the 2018 documentary “To be continued”. Now 14 years old, they are halfway to adulthood. Some have matured, some seem to be still lingering in childhood. Zane has traded her dream of a singing career for her passion for the basketball. Gleb fights in the boxing ring and puts his business talent to good use by selling rulers in class. Anastasia from Stoļerova in the Rezekne region rides horses and learns not to give up. Anete's mother has returned from England and they are now living in Riga and Anete now has a little brother. Kārlis, from Vidzeme, is still fascinated by tractors but now sows fields in a virtual computer game.

Brothers Robert and Martin are a month away from their largest art exhibition. To get creative juices flowing, Martin locks himself in a black cube. Once out, brothers fall into a wild rollercoaster of events existing on the very edge of the chaos, examining the thin line between the artist’s creativity and mental troubles.

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’.

“Lustrum” was one of the state administration principles of the Roman Empire – a five-year period after which public administrators underwent a purification and repentance process that was usually accompanied by a sacrifice. During this time, the representatives of the previous administration confessed all their sins, repented and genuinely swore allegiance to the new administration. The Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Latvia has made a decision to open the KGB archives in May 2018. The film is an endeavour to answer the question of whether the lustration that never took place in the 1990s may turn out to be dangerous for the future existence of statehood.

During the reconstruction of the Valmiera Theatre building (2021-2024), artistic activities were never interrupted - the preparation of new productions and performances in the Round Hall continued. The promised one winter of patience turned into three. Rehearsals and performances took place in various locations in Valmiera, but the theatre building, despite the lack of water and heat, was never abandoned - with construction crews, through the dust and cold, actors and other theatre staff went to the rehearsal hall, the Round Hall, the carpentry workshop, and the administration to work as if nothing were unusual or difficult.