A comedy about sex, love, relationships, and taboo. In a multi-story narrative, we peer behind the closed doors of a seemingly normal city.
A year has passed, and characters of New Year’s Eve Taxi are counting hours until New Year’s Eve once again. All of them have experienced many changes... Andrejs is willing to stay at home with his fiancee, but as Ilze is expecting a baby, she has a lot of cravings, and Andrejs is ready to drive again to get her a burger, scallops, or strawberries. His neighbor, policeman Jēkabs, has been blackmailed throughout the year, but this time, by help of his new friend Anna, he returns to the “crime scene” to redeem his reputation. Innocent drive to the shop turns into a kaleidoscope of events and surprises jeopardising a family gathering.
Should I say - "I do"? Break up? Postpone the wedding? Reconcile? ...? A modern story of relationship, friendship, and love, in which money also plays a big role.
The three speakers represent two of the dialects, with the most common one - the middle dialect spoken in Riga and central parts of Latvia - not featured in the film. In intimate surroundings, a farmer, a schoolteacher, and a herder of ostriches talk about perceived differences between Latvian speakers, and about language policy and their lives.
Raimonds Pauls is almost 85 years old, rehearses almost every day and performs at least once a week. What drives him? Not only he is the most popular composer in Latvia: his songs are sung all over the world. "Dāvāja Māriņa" is so popular in Japan that Paul received the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. In concerts, he collaborates with world stars of Latvian origin - soprano Elīna Garanča, organist Iveta Apkalna, conductor Mariss Jansons. The Latvian Television film crew follows him during the pandemic, realizing that the restrictions and threats of Covid-19 hardly stop the Maestro in the course of his eternal engine. How does he cope with the challenges that time imposes on a person's physical form and the loneliness when most friends have passed away? What is the source of his inexhaustible lifestyle and creative spirit?
The moment when the lights on the stage suddenly go out and the dancer finds himself completely alone in the digital environment, the way back to the viewer must be sought again. Only by looking at oneself, Latvianness and the code of identity - in the lines and patterns of Latvian signs, an unimaginable power will be revealed. And one to one, two to four, tens to hundreds, and "one" will be "we" again. "To dress in Latvian signs" ("Latvju zīmēs rotāties") is a special and unique event in the history of Latvian stage folk dance, because instead of the usual stadium or stage format, the signs are arranged in a digital environment, merging hundreds of dancers with tradition, animations and editing possibilities. Also, what has been unprecedented in the context of stage folk dance is the sound quality with which this performance offers to listen to 15 original compositions based on folk lyrics by Mārtiņš Miļevsks.