Arturs Maskats

The 20th century dreamt of utopia but instead experienced tragedies. This film looks at San Francisco-based Latvian artist and playwright Raimonds Staprāns’ nearly century-long experience of trying to define life and statehood. It constructs an exact replica of one of his paintings, and asks actors to portray characters from his plays. Keeping in mind the symbolically charged image of the red barn in the painting, it deliberately incites arguments between the actors, the director and the crew about the motivations of the characters as well as alternative actions or decisions that they could have taken but did not.

The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia. Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Alexander, and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported to Siberia. In her fight against cold, famine and cruelty, she only gains new strength through the letters she writes to Alexander, full of hope for a free Latvia and a better tomorrow.

A veteran of the Great Patriotic War finds his front-line diary and relives the story that happened to him in the midst of the war. In the midst of fire, blood and dirt, he, then still a young Sashka, takes prisoner the same German boy. The enemy is preparing for death, but a young soldier gives him his word that Russian prisoners are not shot. Later, at the headquarters, saddened by the death of a combat friend, the battalion commander gives the order to shoot the prisoner. Sasha faces the most important choice in his life.

A tale about a nine-year old boy's relationship with the world around him, shot in one of Latvia's poorest and most beautiful regions - Latgale

17-year-old Ria is a sensitive and mysterious young woman. Ria's mother has suffered in a car accident and has stopped speaking since her daughter's birth. The family grows deer for sale, yet, the business is not successful. To earn some money, her father decides to organize a hunt.

Claudio is a farmer. His wife Ivana is a dressmaker and they are avid tango dancers. They have a big dream: to dance the tango together in Buenos Aires. Claudio has Parkinson’s, an incurable degenerative disease. His condition was diagnosed 20 years ago. Doctors told him that he would be in a wheelchair within two years. However, not only is Claudio still on his feet and able to work, but he’s also still dancing. Today he is devoted to fostering and supporting research on the benefits of tango for Parkinson’s patients. Claudio and Ivana’s story inspired the renowned Latvian composer Arturs Maskats to write a new tango composition with world-famous accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. But just as their dream of dancing in Buenos Aires is about to come true, Claudio is hospitalized...

On June 14, 1941, more than 15,000 Latvian inhabitants, including approximately 4,000 children of Latvian, Jewish, Polish and Russian ethnicity were deported to Siberia. During this period of deportation by the Soviet invaders, the men were separated from their families and sent to the Gulag. Some were sentenced to the highest punishment, death, and the rest were kept in labor camps. The women and children were sent to the remote Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk districts. The first two years were the most difficult and many perished from the harsh conditions. Today some 400 of those deported children still live in Latvia and Siberia. This documentary describes the fate of these children.