Ego Media

A story about a city built as a paradise but turned into hell – a city slowly turning into paradise again, just in a different way. Igor has been living in the Chernobyl Zone for almost ten years, for peace and a chance to escape modern civilization. Psychological issues, both personal and global, are still troubling him, and he embodies both harmonizing peace and supernatural stress. And an existential secret – the secret of the essence of life. He is surrounded by the elderly inhabitants of Chernobyl, living in villages entirely overcome by nature. They lead their unrealistic Atlantean lives, from which even war in Ukraine seems to be happening on another planet.

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.

The main characters of the film have made choices, which change their lives forever. A young man Yigal Amir assassinates the Prime Minister of Israel and becomes the most hated prisoner in the country. Larissa, who emigrated from Russia, mother of four divorces her first husband, marries the assassin and gives birth to his son. For many years the film authors have been trying to solve and perceive this complicated story. One of them, Hertz Frank, passes away during the shootings remaining on the threshold of the eternal mystery - life, death and love...

They met on Christmas Eve, beyond one's usual living-space: at the morgue. In an outburst of feelings, they try to manipulate each other in order to get what they want. She wants him, but he wants to vanish – following the rules of black comedy, neither one of them will get anything.

The film tells about an active senior, Mārtiņš Ziebergs (65), who is spending his old days and retirement looking for lost people; there are hundreds of them in Latvia. Following his activities, the film discloses both the everyday routine of the senior – life of “a detective” and process of investigation – as well as the outcome of it – unexpected reunions of the ones who have been searching for each other for years and also unmade reunions or cases never solved.

1940. On the border between Latvia and the USSR, a woman is killed in front of her house as she tried to protect her son from the liberating attack of the Soviets. Almost 80 years later, the archive photo bearing witness to this news item and representing a collateral victim of the European Union’s founding conflict forms the starting point for a journey undertaken by Davis Sīmanis. He navigates from one side to the other of this border, which today represents another separation, one that is geographical but also cultural: between Europe and Russia.

Ieva has been an obedient granddaughter for years – choosing a safe career in a bank as her grandmother wanted. Her mother left the family years ago when she had to look for work abroad. That has made ties between Ieva and her grandmother especially tight. Dissatisfaction with the constant adaption to the material world is flickering under the surface and Ieva lives her dreamlife with her friends. She plays the keyboard in a girl band and stays out late. When Ieva decides to have a provocative tattoo on her arm made, her grandmother goes completely nuts.

A portrait of prominent opera singer - bass-baritone Egils Silins. For 4 years, the crew followed the singer through the greatest European opera houses. The film reveals behind the scenes and perfor-mances of Richard Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca at the Latvian National Opera, Wagner’s The Valkyrie at the Zurich Opera, Georges Bizet’s Carmen at the Vienna Opera, and Wagner’s Parsifal at the Munich Opera.

A documentary film about Stanislav Petrov, a former lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.

A youngster Andis, 21 offers a friend of his grandmother Mara, 80, who is dying, to fulfil her every wish in exchange for her apartment after her death. This agreement lets both of them rethink their attitude for what they actually want.

A young married housewife's dull routine is enlivened as she spies on the sexual escapades of her fencing instructor neighbour. She too is seduced by him, but the fear of losing her family results in hysteria and an unpredictable climax.

Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Jewish dissidents plot to hijack an empty plane and escape the USSR. Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane. 45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, leaders of the group, "heroes" in the West but "terrorists" in Russia, even today.

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.

When 15-year-old rebellious Stefi goes missing, her mother Helena has nothing left to lose. Why cling to sanity when madness offers a chance for reconciliation and love?

Anatols Imermanis was a Latvian crime writer and a poet during Soviet occupation. He could call himself a successful, financially stable soviet writer. But he wanted more – to be free. The free West, especially Paris, was a life-long dream for Imermanis, but he was never allowed to leave the Soviet Union. So he created his own personal Paris – a bohemian lifestyle, sexual freedom, ignoring all puritan norms of the soviet world. He died alone without fulfilling his dream about Paris. But death was not a reason to give up – his last will was to be cremated and his ashes to be dispersed in Paris red light quarters.

An insecure millennial woman pursues her dream whilst learning how to adult. While being preoccupied with life tasks at hand she can barely handle and also severe depression, main character of this film Marta (30) keeps dreaming about making films, drawn to the healing power of storytelling, but not having the courage to act these dreams out; sometimes she is too scared to even pick up the phone. Marta’s life seems to sway both in comic and tragic directions: it’s sometimes a mix of ultimate freedom, sex, drugs, friendship, laughter, alcohol, lots of alcohol, music, honesty and love, and sometimes the reality Marta avoids to face becomes so brutal she can’t take it anymore. Through the course of the film Marta learns there is an unavoidable question that at some point becomes inevitable for almost every filmmaker: if you really want to direct films, can you first direct yourself out of depression?

Some fortunate humans have secret insect friends that inspire their creativity. Nine-year-old Viga is an adventurous storyteller who hides her struggles with reading and writing because she is ashamed. Her classmate Sana is a model student, always focused and serious, with no time for fun. Viga's other secret is her new friendship with Taro, a cockroach who fuels her imagination. When Sana discovers and reveals Viga’s secrets, Viga must rise above the mockery to help Sana when her mother faces humiliation on live TV. Together, they must overcome their differences, team up, and learn the values of acceptance and compassion while saving Taro from an exterminator, capturing a Chinese emperor, and executing the perfect “Coup à la Cupcake” heist.

What does it mean for a woman to take up the role of mother? The film follows four Latvian women during different stages of pregnancy. An ambitious dancer has to put her career on hold while being pregnant. A housewife expects her second child and fears postpartum depression recurring. An urban party girl becomes pregnant, decides to get married and move to the countryside to build a new home from scratch. A young entrepreneur and ex-punk welcomes her first child yet is haunted by the traumatic events from her past. All four women offer a unique insider point of view of pregnancy, as part of the footage is shot by the protagonists themselves. They go through a mix of emotions, highlighting that pregnancy, contrary to mainstream representation, is not only about the child - it is about the mother, too.

The documentary about Dainis Īvāns, leader of the National Awakening movement between late 1980s and early 1990s, a human symbol of the recent history of Latvia who embodies all hope, idealism, disappointment, choices, compromises, wins and losses. Eventually, he finds strength within himself to return to his roots, rather than let grindstones of history crush him, to be more than just an accidental figure in the big plan of destiny.

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.