VFS Films

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.

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.

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.

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.

They're called water carriers, domestics, 'gregarios', 'Sancho Panzas' of professional cycling. Always at the back of the group, with no right for a personal victory. These wonderful losers are the true warriors of professional cycling.

After enduring horrors during the War in the Eastern part of Ukraine (2015), three young Ukrainian war veterans return home, both stronger than before and full of scars. They try to find out how to belong in this old but new reality and win their private wars, try to understand how to live civil life. But in February 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started and they are faced with new challenges of reality. What experience do the heroes gain in these wars, and how are they initiated by accepting death?

Every day, come rain or shine, Theodore used to bike the seven kilometres from his house to the centre of the village to sit and drink beer in the bus stop. For him, no doubt, this place was the centre of the Universe. With his death, the centre has moved elsewhere, and the bus stop is just a bus stop again.

Psychological thriller connecting three different people in the mysterious vortex, trying to untangle the dramatic fight of border between the truth and fantasy. Rob, a former real estate broker, unemployed, starts following a strange Japanese woman, Oki, who constantly moves from house to house. He drags his roommate Wylie into the investigation during which they have to face the dark past and curse of Oki, while dealing with the history of their own.

Mother takes her eight-year-old daughter Antonia to a children’s creativity camp. Antonia is not happy about having to spend time under close adult supervision. On their way, she spots a sign saying ”The Robots Have Escaped!” The sign unleashes Antonia’s imagination and grows into a fantasy of how exciting her stay in the camp might turn out to be. Of course, Antonia’s and the robots’ paths intersect at the camp, where they intend to steal children’s dreams during their afternoon nap to convert them into ingenious commercials. Thriller-like events unfold. Thanks to Antonia’s inquisitive and rebellious nature and with her best friend and favourite toy Yeti by her side, the robots’ intention is averted.

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.

At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.

More than twenty years after Vladimir Putin came to supreme power in Russia on May 7, 2000, Russian society is deeply divided. A young, modern generation opposes the growing repression by the regime, which still retains the support of many members of previous generations. Who are these ordinary citizens who dream of living in a different Russia? What price will they have to pay to achieve the freedom and justice they so desire?

Little kids, big dreams and smashingly good music – Dixieland follows the amazing progress of four members of a Ukrainian children’s brass band from Kherson. Through steady practice under the wildest of conditions, Roman (12, trumpet), Polina (10, trombone, drums and many other instruments), Nikita (12, drums) and Nikita (14, piano) produce magical music with ancient, wobbly instruments. Not least due to their wit and good humor, they persevere together, helped along by their 80+-year-old conductor and a young teacher. These children of the post-Soviet provinces use American tunes to achieve their dream – to become someone in the world and make something of their lives, no matter how dire the circumstances. From the authors of an awards winning documentary film Ukrainian Sheriffs.

Dinārs is a Latvian schlager singer popular with the ladies and known for his big cat mane. The eponymous film follows his path over a turbulent season of work.

A laid-back journey in search of one of the world’s most fascinating families, observed and examined from within its most intimate relationships, where the truth and depth of a memoir meet the ironic tone of an indie comedy.

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?

A cinematic journey into one of the greatest European noble families, the Radziwiłłs. Even the King would stand up when Radziwiłł the Black entered the room. Members of the Radziwiłł family weren’t afraid to defend the Reformers when the fires of the Inquisition burned across Europe. It was a Radziwiłł who went on one of the most challenging pilgrimages from Vilnius to Jerusalem and then published an account, becoming the pioneer of travel literature. A mix of documentary and fiction, past and present, and history and its re-enactment, brings to life the essence of a once-popular saying: “I don’t want to be a king. I want to be a Radziwiłł.”

A reindeer herdsman’s life is as gently monotonous as the tundra itself. It flows in synchrony with the life of the reindeer herd from one migration to the next. The time between these two points belongs entirely to the herdsman. It’s áigi - the herdsman’s time.

Inese (41) and Karlis (62) occupy an illegally built hut in the suburbs of Riga in Latvia. After the collapse of socialism, they have found themselves at the bottom of the social ladder, doomed to fighting for mere existence. They live on a single retiring allowance and other people’s leftovers. They are neither alcoholics nor criminals, they are les misérables of today. They are growing scraggy vegetables, picking mushrooms, gathering windfallen branches for fuel, and breeding earthworms for anglers. Everything they put their hands to falls through… After fifteen years of living together, Karlis and Inese are expecting their first baby.

“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.