St. John’s Night is a traditional midsummer Latvian celebration where family and friends get together to build bonfires, drink and have a good time. According to a legend, on this night lovers and those who wish to fall in love can search the woods for the "magic fern".
Young and promising doctor loses everything due to her conflict with the totalitarian Soviet regime – career, love for life and even mother’s instinct denying breast milk to her baby. However, the grown-up daughter becomes her only supporter who tries to help ease mother’s depression and learn to live under the Soviet regime. The lifelines of mother and daughter flow in the occupied Soviet Latvia from 1945 to 1989 when the Soviet Union collapses. “I didn’t want to live and I didn’t want her to drink milk from a mother who doesn’t want to live.” The story is based on the bestseller Soviet Milk by the renown Latvian novelist Nora Ikstena. Soviet Milk has been translated and published in more than 20 countries.
Tragedy of the Zitars family based on the novel by Vilis Lacis.
Gunars Taurins has become a dad-sitter in Latvia. He wants to return to France as soon as possible once he has found a caregiver for his father. But it's not that easy and Gunars has to stay in Riga whether he likes it or not.
Markuss must adapt to a new life living with his granny in the countryside. After Emīlija – a neighbor’s daughter – throws some contemptuous remarks about the boy’s father, Markuss decides to teach her a cruel lesson. This has severely negative consequences which resonate throughout the village. Forced to work the boy begins to harbor hatred towards the others in the village. The only person the boy can relate to is an old Sailor living in the nearby woods. They inspire one another and keep each other’s secrets. It is only through an accidental turn of events that Emīlija’s mother’s intended sanctions against Markuss and the boy’s reputation in the eyes of the inhabitants of the village radically change.
A fairy tale about communism, social-democracy, and capitalism. (The sequel to Wandering Marxwards)
Choosing the fate of a rock musician was similar to being a dissident. From the 60s, the Soviet Union tried to discourage and restrict the expansion of rock music by any means. They called it the “rotten fruit of degraded capitalism, demoralizing the minds of Soviet youth”. Despite that, rock music broke the wall – made a hole in the Iron Curtain – and gained the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of young people.Rock musicians were on the frontline of the rebellion against the Soviet regime. Despite censorship, they managed to deliver, in a hidden, roundabout way through lyrics and music, the spirit of nonconformity and freedom of choice to their audience. A film about Latvian and Soviet rock pioneers, their lives and destinies.