Discoveries from Latvia World Cinema

Riga - from a subjective perspective, as seen and felt by the film's characters - artist Biruta Delle, the family of violinists Dagnija and Uldis Sprūdži, baker Dzintra Knaute, and the film's authors.

A film about a misunderstood artist and his struggle with mental health issues.

An experimental film with philosophical undertones, in which a boy paints cotton paper black, smudges his hands and draws black circles around his eyes. After a while, the boy disappears and only a black paper silhouette of a man remains on the easel.

A film about the renowned surgeon Viktors Kalnbērzs and his work.

A documentary essay examining the creative process of creating a book from the writer's first thought to the printing of the typescript.

Poetic journey through the intimate exchanges of two Latvian literary giants, Rainis and Aspazija, brought to life in a captivating short film. Previously undisclosed letters between Rainis and Olga Kliģere make Aspazija reflect on her role as a beloved in Raini's life and Aspazija finds herself entwined in the complex dynamics of a timeless love triangle.

Philosopher Uldis Tirons in conversation with Victor Kossakovsky (no other participants).

A film about how ideology destroys nations and controls people's destinies – a documentary story about a family turned into strangers. Little Nora reads her great-grandmother Eleonora's diaries and witnesses an entire political era through her eyes.

Stand-up comedy special by Rūdolfs Kugrēns.

Rūdolfs Kugrēns's stand-up comedy special.

Jānis Kreičmanis's first stand-up comedy special.

Documentary about the legendary Latvian composer Mārtiņš Brauns.

The bee has not yet been born, but its fate has already been decided – work to collect honey. But even bees can "fall out of frame". This also happens with the hero of this film - Juris. Whether by chance, or naturally, or on purpose, the little bee, whose destiny is to collect honey, becomes the rescuer and a father of a new bee hive.

MANICTOM Corporation spreads the word about the spread of a new virus called miiila and urges people to protect themselves by attaching a chip that prevents people from loving and feeling. A young woman, Cora, noticing the symptoms of the virus in her wife Marcelle, decides to join the corporation and add the MANIAECTOMIA 3.0 chip to herself, but Marcelle strongly disapproves of the corporation's activities, thus becoming a Criminal. As a task for the new Employee Cora, the Corporation develops a plan to eliminate Marcelle. Will Cora, as an employee of the corporation, be able to implement this plan?

Laura and Gustav mutually decide to end their four-year relationship, but when Gustav moves out two weeks later, the couple's apartment becomes a metaphorical waiting room where they both try to figure out whether to go back to where they came from or move on? The situation is complicated by their shared cat Marta, whom they both see as a child.

The Tipping Point is an experimental dance film exploring the cycles of pointless productivity, our reliance on resources and the need to self-realise. These themes are explored through a movement algorithm that depicts a miniature dystopian society. This society consists of four parties each with a single function - the director, their left-hand man, the guard and the hustler. This all changes when an unplanned event creates a ripple in the structure and pushes its inhabitants to question their role within the society and its functionality.

In the film Daugavpils, well-known people in society judge what Daugavpils is like and what the city's main challenges are - Russian-speakers, the consequences of Russian media propaganda, loss in the "European Capital of Culture 2027" competition, a municipality that is not always loyal to the state, investments that almost do not enter the city. Each of the topics tries to answer the question "What can we do about it, so that Latvia's second largest city and Latgale as a region no longer causes surprise after the election results, and is loyal to the country and European values?"

Behind the scenes of the best TV series in Latvian audiovisual history.

Munks and Lemijs accidentally find a cave and go to explore it, but it turns out that the cave holds hidden treasures and the path to them is full of dangerous obstacles.

Animation team film about adventures with pasta.

Animation brigade's puppet animation film about Riga Film Studio.

Christmas is also coming to the Emergency Brigade House. Silink, Potterick and Bembelat's preparations for a nice evening are interrupted by another call. But you can't refuse a desperate mother whose children are waiting for Father Christmas.

Parents' only baby refuses to eat... The parents' desperation leads them to the resourceful men of the Emergency Brigade.

One day, Tiger and his friend Gārni find a lost baby bird in the forest. They decide to help it find its parents. However, this turns out to be not so easy. The friends have no choice but to take the chick to their home. Everything would be fine, but at night mysterious flying beasts with glowing eyes arrive and kidnap the baby...

A documentary film about the outstanding actor Harijs Liepiņš.

This film about four legionnaires attempts to give them back their past. Kazimirs Šusts, Jānis Mencis, Imants Zeltiņš, Kārlis Smiltēns – they were born and raised at the same time as the Latvian state, and together with it they were drawn into a war in which both the state and the people's hope and struggle was to stay alive. However, the war did not destroy them, and each of them survived and found refuge in the Latvian state. They had enough strength to resist the hostile Soviet present and the difficulties of exile, to maintain their humanity, to work and to await the return of the Latvian state.

The documentary depicts passionate and diverse people who decided to create a dance group during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to start learning folk dances ahead of the 2023 Latvian Song and Dance Festival. What starts as a joke in a WhatsApp group turns into a serious commitment and soon plans are being hatched and rehearsal rooms are being booked. Will the dream of the dance troupe come true? The film also highlights the problem that many amateur art collectives have experienced during the two years spent in the pandemic.

Poetry born out of the spirit of sound hatches and crackles before your eyes. Textual passages driven and made audible by voices that are powered by various electromechanical tuning devices. Four dark, poetic characters turned sound engineers convert them with effects processors, while the accompanying sounds take shape in front of your eyes out of poem rhythms and intonations.

Fate, luck, or hard work? What is the "recipe" for an Olympic gold medal? Ghetto Games offers an exciting story about Nauri Miezi, Edgars Krūmiņš, Agnis Čavars, and Kārlis Pauls Lasmanis – the first Olympic champions in 3x3 basketball. This is the second and final part of the saga "From the Ghetto To the Olympics," which will allow every viewer to experience both the bright and dark sides of Olympic medals. Faith, betrayal, audience admiration and turned backs – many emotions have been experienced, allowing this rags-to-riches story to conclude with the highest sporting recognition in the world. What is the net result of the medal and, most importantly, what do we do next?

Four pals are hoping to become athletes and to get a spot in the Sports' Academy. The guys need to convince an Olympic coach first that they're worth it - which turns out to be a tricky task.

What would you do if a look from an old man told you that being young is the coolest thing possible? And what should you do if you're young but you do not know what to make of it?

A film produced in collaboration with the Latvian Football Federation tells the story of Latvia's leading female football referees: Viola Raudziņa, Jeļena Jermolajeva, and Diāna Vanaga.

Curiosity leads to success, success leads to innovation, the new creates resistance. Someone suffers.

The international film festival Arsenāls has been a fixture on the Riga scene for the last 20 years. It has introduced new film aesthetic and was one of the only creatively free events during Soviet times. Over the years the festival has influenced culture and society in Eastern Europe, continually dazzling us with its creativity. The film is a portrait of the director, the father of Arsenals and trusty knight of surrealism.

This is a film about the generation of the 1970s, about its teenage dreams, hopes, choices and its adulthood reality. When the director of the film was in year 7 at school, he got a 8 mm film camera from his dad. The first thing he did was film his classmates and record their visions of future. Thirty years have passed. The future is here. Have they succeeded in fulfilling their dreams?

Life treads calmly in this quiet Latvian village. Almost like in a fairytale, with friendly neighbours, a safe environment, and a bustling social life. It is also the location of a successful organic farm, its produce well-known throughout the country. Tadeus, the owner, was once known as an exemplary citizen in the village. Obliging and considerate, he loved both his milk yielders – the cow, and little Laura, the granddaughter of his farm-worker Dangira. But this “love” was double-sided. One side was for the eyes of villagers, while the other was hidden behind a locked bedroom door.

The well known but misunderstood career of talanted opera singer Uldis Leiškalns ended more than 20 years ago. The real reasons behind him being fired remain a mistery. How does the life of an opera star change after stepping down from the golden stage to the gray streets of Riga?

A documentary about Indulis Ranka, a Latvian sculptor.

Near the end of the Second World War, when it became clear that Latvia would be re-invaded by the Soviet Army, some 150,000 of its citizens fled to Germany as refugees. Among them were farmers, businessmen, government officials, intellectuals and ordinary folks who had already experienced the dreadful Year of Terror. Almost one million people from Eastern Europe sought escape from the Soviet regime. The Latvians, who became DPs (displaced persons), tried to create a “little Latvia” within the confines of the refugee camps. This film follows the fates of their children.

An animation film based on Latvian folk tales about Kurbads, a son of a mare, who saves princesses and defeats the evil witch.

Electricity goes off at the Eiffel tower security guard’s office. The guard tries to repair it, but he doesn't succeed, so he calls for “The Rescue Team”. The team arrives in their yellow plane and start the rescue operation by fixing cables. Initially, it works out well, but then the light suddenly goes off in all city of Paris, and the portrait of Mona Lisa disappears from the darkened Louvre Museum. However, things will work out fine in the end!

Small dust creatures live on the bookshelf and find the world around them to be their home. One of them, a little wise Dusty, suddenly encounters a boy. Their friendship turns the boring everyday life into a great adventure...

An elderly man from the countryside arrives in Riga and adventures ensue....

A documentary about Latgalians in Siberia.

A dark caravan arrives in the city during the night. The next morning children find a big box left on the street. Strange sounds come from this box. The famous Rescue Team men have been called in to help...

The film reviews the pages of the history of medicine in which healing was integrally linked to ritual acts and incantation, paying particular attention to the image of the woman as the practitioner of magical functions. At the start of the wave of witch trials in Europe that lasted from the 16th to the 18th century, women with knowledge of medicine and midwifery were persecuted, while the right to proclaim the truth was given over to the Church, and subse- quently – modern medicine and science, which was mainly controlled by men. Also denigrated as witches were women who didn’t fit into the accepted social order, because, for example they were unmarried or did not have children. Witches were perceived as the embodiments of evil. They were feared and hated, because people believed that years of blight and pestilence, illnesses and still-born children were their handiwork.

Author on her work: Short film "UN-good" is produced within the project "Cinema poetry" in September 2008. It is a story about an imaginary phone call of a girl, but the imagination becomes real. Short film is based on the original text of a poem "UN-good" by poet Erika Berzina.

An evening in the life of a girl from a rural area in Latvia.

A portrait of two sisters - identical twins. Astrīda and Rasma usually just call each other by 'sister', since the deportation to Siberia, the hard childhood spent there and the long way back home has robbed the singular 'I' of any meaning. The pair live in a small flat in a Riga suburb in isolation from society and have devoted the last years of their lives to religion, surveilling the safety and routine of the yard of their apartment building, baking, endlessly talking to and over each other and taking care of their two identical cats.

"I was tired of aimlessly walking the club circuit so I decided to entertain myself in a more interesting fashion, combining clubbing with the creation of a work of art. Wearing the dress code appropriate to each club so that I would not stand out from the crowd, and armed with my camera, I walked into the ladies toilets of various night clubs asking the girls and women I bumped into the same question: What is in your handbag? It is unbelievable how much one can learn about girls by checking the contents of their bags and also listening to their own comments about them."

The sequel to the 2012 hit "Gary Porter and the Cucumber Room". Did Voldemārs really die? Did Gary Porter really die too? The questions will be answered.

Hello demmy. Ive been expecting you. As you know, we are low on money and you will need to rob a bank with your friends.