Documentarian

An absurd game of “finding happiness” is being played by local Latvian coyotes* and illegal immigrants on the Russian and the European Union border. It is a game with no winner – all participants are driven to play by the sense of despair. While one side leaves home and undertakes a perilous journey to the other side of the globe, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in a free country, the other side risks their freedom to earn a chance to stay right where they are, in their homeland. *coyote – someone who smuggles illegal immigrants

A dialogue between a mother and her son.

They prepare the resting place for us all. They do their work by standing by the side of people when they are in grief, and are the last hands to touch the grave towel that lowers the deceased a meter and a half below the ground. Alongside other ancient professions, gravediggers have inherited knowledge and skills through several generations - not only in digging holes, but also in Latvia's rich cemetery culture, where everything has its own order. Latvia's cemeteries are where traditions from different centuries meet, and every gravedigger needs to know them so that he or she can continue to receive the stamps for the job of digging graves. The most experienced of them have already received 5 000 such stamps, which is equivalent to the population of one town in Latvia.

The documentary “Residents” probes problems in Latvia in general and Latvia’s medicine in particular with the story of two energetic young interns, Kārlis and Laura.

Documentarian Ivars Zviedris began filming Faithful unto Death after meeting a woman who unknowingly carried a surgeon's tool in her abdomen for 27 years, following an appendectomy. This discovery led Zviedris to explore the resilience of pensioners in rural areas, who survive by forming cooperative living arrangements, sharing a single household. These arrangements, driven by financial necessity, reveal the struggles of individuals who must live together despite fractured relationships, pooling their pensions to cover basic expenses. Central to the story is Mara, a woman with a tragic history of lost husbands, who remained with her last partner, Ivars, for 24 years, bound by their mutual need to survive.

The film focuses on a bizarre state of affairs in the northern city of Valmiera where the corpse of a man has lain for nine years because of complex and contradictory communications between the relatives and various responsible institutions. The situation could easily have come from the pen of Gogol or Kafka, but is all too real and prompts questions about the more general problem of bureaucracy in Latvia.

The film begins with closing of the oldest prison in Latvia – the Brasa Prison was built in 1905 and cannot ensure normal functioning. Inmates are leaving the place that has long been their only home. Our protagonists reside in Ward 207. They have really inhabited it – there is even a fish tank in the ward! They are not from a different planet. Humanity of the inmates may contrast with their records of committed crimes. All have their small pleasures and big plans. All are longing for changes and being afraid of them. Likewise, the term of imprisonment is running out for several of our protagonists. They are getting ready for life at large. They know how to survive in extreme circumstances but are unprepared for living a normal life. One’s return to the big world is one of the most accentuated marginal situations.