Budding lawyer Vik is disappointed in himself. He tries to change and please everyone until he loses sight of himself. Vik meets the mysterious Mirror Man who offers to help him regain his self-esteem and become the kind of person Vik dreams of becoming. Vik agrees, but the Mirror Man at times leaves Vik in situations where he surprises others not just by his new-found self-confidence, but also by insolence that causes a rift with his closest friends. Soon the Mirror Men in Vik’s life are too many to control, and when he tries to back away – it’s too late.

A local guide is asked to lead a group of influencers along the river of a remote valley. As they get deeper into the wilderness, their venture takes a frightening turn.

Apatity, a far-north industrial town in Russia, first came into being as a USSR concentration camp. Although its environment is at the brink of ecological disaster, the people here still believe in the state’s promise of immortality that can be gained through sacrificial service to the fatherland. This is how the elite in a totalitarian state buy a person’s will, strength, talent and, indeed, life, turning the human being into another resource that is as faceless as a grey lump of ore. ‘I cannot fight big corporations or state structures with a film. But I hope that there is someone in the darkness of the cinema whose heart will get a bit warmer after seeing it,’ says the director. The larger part of the film was shot during the polar night.

Ramin, an ex-wrestler who once won seven matches in 55 seconds, lives alone in the east Georgian town of Kvareli. Long ago he fell in love with a girl with whom he was estranged soon after he met her. Now, at 75, still unmarried but full of life, he travels to a remote village to seek her out. This film presents Ramin's journey through the Georgian landscape and through the memories of this man with a old aged body and an unbeatable heart.

“TESA MAN” is a music film – a poetic exploration of the relationship between collective creativity and the natural world. The film blurs the lines between reality and imagination, inviting viewers into an animistic experience where music performed by the band Tesa in a frozen Baltic landscape attempts to transform air, steam, ash and clay into something much more alive.

During Latvia’s centennial year, 15 filmmakers created each his own film portrait of a person living in Latvia on the background of centenary events. Documentary 2018 combines these stories into a unique poetic vision based on analogy with the documentary 235 000 000, a classic of the Riga school of poetic documentary cinema. This film is an attempt to make sure whether the codes of the poetic cinema are still relevant and accessible today.

In this allegory about paradise lost, Ildze yearns to find peace and fulfilment by moving from the city to the countryside. However, her thoughts are consumed by the illness of her child, her estrangement from her husband and his absence. In the meantime, Ildze’s grief is enveloped by nature’s promise of comfort, which never arrives. She tries to understand where to find the beginning of the cycle of sacrifice and where to find its end. And who is her victim, or is it herself?

In the Gulf of Finland shipwreck hunters come across the remains of a sunken ship. Having examined the images obtained by an underwater robot, researchers come to a conclusion that the wreck remains are that of “Krišjānis Valdemārs” – independent Latvia´s first icebreaker. The story of an icebreaker allows viewers to the look at the history of Latvia between wars from a new angle and provides insights into the little known, but fascinating episodes of a maritime history.

The film tells a story about the latest musical revolution in recent history – the early days of the rave scene and the golden age of techno culture. International political changes in the mid-80s and early 90s, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a short period of time allowed this cultural phenomenon to become a mass movement which was almost completely independent from the global corporations and which did not fight with the system but created its own system.

New performers have recently moved into the 130-year-old building of the Riga Circus. Having built a stage in the stables, actors Ance, Āris, Klāvs, Reinis and the other members of the theatre company Kvadrifrons are reinvigorating and preserving the tradition of live art in the circus. The name of the group is an acronym in Latvian that conveys their ethos: they are an organisation that can chill with their friends, have bursts of amazing creativity, and whose members are far from unintelligent. And all the while, the strong smell of elephants wafts through the building. Here and there, the life of the previous inhabitants makes itself known. Soon shamanistic rituals alternate with clowning around, fortune-telling with illusion juggling, stagecraft with personal choices. Then suddenly, out of Nothing… emerges Theatre.

Driving in their yellow Lada flying its own little Ukrainian flag, they travel from incident to incident – calming an angry neighbor, investigating the discovery of a body, struggling to unfold a stroller and attempting to re-integrate Vova, the freeloader who eats other people’s dogs but actually longs for a normal existence – just like everyone else here. The seasons pass until political developments reach the village by way of the TV screen, sowing separatist discord.

There is a popular Latvian folksong which begins with the phrase "I was singing out high on a mountain". The irony of it is that according to physical geography there are no mountains in Latvia. So what exactly is the place where the Latvians are "singing out"? It may be safely said that it's the same place where they are skiing. That's how we make mountains out of molehills...Snow-covered mountains, to be sure.

The world seen through the eyes of children. The action takes place in Karosta, the former military port of Liepaja city – however, it is not that important, as the film could take place anywhere. We observe children playing on the beach, revealing the core of Pakalnina’s work: perceiving and transmitting emotions.

A dreamer by nature, Quanqi Zhu decides to set up a unique installation at the hillside of Sacred Songshan mountain in China. Despite the language barrier, his best companion is Latvian architect Austris Mailitis. As the building of the object begins, the creators themselves have to levitate between cultural differences, conventions and personal ambitions.

The narrow, sandy strip of the seashore is a neutral zone that belongs equally to the sea and the mainland. This zone possesses an unusual chracteristic, namely, it attracts people with a practically magnetic power, transforming the beach into something like a playground where the old and the new, the primitive and the civilised, the traditional and the modern all coexist.

Those of us who fly in airplanes probably don’t think about those who fly through Riga Airport on their own wings. But on any given day, up to 30,000 birds might visit the airport. And it would only take one… Airport wildlife control employee Mareks would like to go to church and light a candle for luck before he goes to work every day. In fact, all of us need that luck – it’s just that we’re not aware of it. Maybe that’s a good thing. Understanding wildlife that might turn up at the airport and making sure that the paths of birds, animals and airplanes don’t cross is a very real job.

In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.

Instead of Einars Pelšs' eighth poetry book, he publishes his collected works, but the buyer of the book receives an ordinary brick. He translates the authors of the Russian Golden Age and publishes them under his own name, challenging the boundaries of literature. Is a poet who makes fun of art unique or exactly what we expect from contemporary authors? Einarrative is an extraordinary story that portrays the narrative of the life of Einārs Pelšs. In the film, this narrative is an experience of contrasting changes both in its visual style and in Einars’ poetic works and personality, allowing him to get involved in the depiction of the narrative himself, making the film as Einārs Pelšs' audiovisual collected works.

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

After the fall of the Soviet Union large numbers of immigrants from the East stayed in Latvia for good, Latvians simply call them “Russians”. Over 20 years of independence later mutual suspicion and bias are still there in the most part of the local community. Therefore, a Latvian director involves an independent Russian speaking Norwegian colleague in helping him understand Latvian “Russians” and coming up with an integration plan. But soon enough it becomes clear that only Latvians themselves can manage the challenge. And so begins director’s journey away from the division “us / them”.