Vacuum Cleaner Salesman

Plagued by an abusive childhood, a woman finds escape in competitive swimming, sexual experimentation, toxic relationships, and addiction before ultimately finding her voice through writing.

The love story of sixteen-year-old Arturs is interrupted by the First World War. After losing his mother and his home, he finds some consolation in joining the army, because this is the first time national battalions are allowed in the Russian Empire. But war is nothing like Arturs imagined – no glory, no fairness. It is brutal and painful. Arturs is now completely alone as war takes the lives of his father and brother. Also, no progress is made in the promised quick resolution of the war and timely return home. Within the notion that only he alone cares about returning home and that his homeland is just a playground for other nations, Arturs finds strength for the final battle and eventually returns home to start everything from scratch, just like his newly born country.

The story of middle-aged Japanese woman Keiko, who has been living in a shell for decades due to a family tragedy in Kobe. The modest act of eating and the sensations it gives us provided Keiko a lifeline to survive. Unwillingly, she joins a group of Japanese women traveling to Northern Europe to participate in a kimono show in the fairytale-like art nouveau world of Riga. During her performance, Keiko suddenly comes face to face with her husband, who disappeared twenty years ago and now wants to read-dress their relationship and who Keiko has become.

Anita and her children, Santa and Kristaps, live in an apartment in Riga. Every year, they celebrate New Year’s Eve with grandma, uncle Peter and a feast fit for kings…

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 young director, who sits in front of a commission defending a film based on her own experiences with sex and relationships, is continually confronted with questions about why she’s making the movie. The answer doesn’t come easy… Linde took on a difficult task for her short film.

Everyone has their own emotional overwhelm regarding a bad smell. Lizete, an amateur interviewer, is eager to record the moments when it is revealed. Dealing with the topic of bad odour's influences on society, this is an animated short film for adults in the inquiring style of a documentary. The director continues to work on tragi-comic stories about our natural awkwardness while finding ourselves.

Antra, a stressed cello teacher, prepares her stubborn student Estere moments before the competition.

Laine is a college girl from a bland middle-class suburb in Latvia. As Laine’s father distances himself from his crumbling marriage and his family, Laine is unable to cope with the separation and discovers the edgy Riga party scene, where she falls in love with seasoned raver Gunda. Going from rave to rave, the girls journey into a drug-fuelled underworld of anarchy, freedom and exploration.

In a greyish office building workers turn to ritualistic actions to overcome ever-increasing challenges.

Self-proclaimed cryptocurrency expert Fatso is a middle-aged curmudgeon frittering away his days with video games and conspiracy theory videos. Obsessed with the concept of eternal life since childhood, Fatso experiments with various quack theories in the hopes of becoming immortal, despite his miserablism. When Egons and Carlos inexplicably appear outside of his remote woodland trailer, asking for an invitation inside, they bring glad tidings that he has recently been selected as “the chosen one.” Appealing to his nature as a “cowardly, passive, antisocial sluggard,” who has squandered his humanity so thoroughly that the transition to undead would prove practically seamless, the friendly duo make promises of a new, more fulfilling life as a vampire.

The film is based on true events leading up to the historical 2013 resignation of Benedict XVI. After succeeding John Paul II, and serving as Pope for eight years, Joseph Ratzinger shocked the world by becoming the first Pope to voluntarily resign in over 600 years. In light of moral and ethical upheavals in the Catholic Church, and the unique challenges of the 21st century, Ratzinger's cited reason of declining health raises more questions than it answers.

Summer, 1989. City girls, Paula and Laura, spend their summer holidays in a small town with their cousins, Maija and Linda. Four girls, left unattended, enjoy freedom, imitate the life of adults, plunge into reckless adventures and get into trouble. Based on true events, nine-year-old Paula’s story of growing up is set against the background of time when Latvia made her first steps towards independence.

The true story about Latvian poet Austra Skujiņa, who spends her days dreaming and writing poems while working in the Ministry of Agriculture. Her accidental late night meeting with a policeman in a park triggers a series of unexpected events. The young poet is forced to face a choice between giving in to the policeman’s blackmail or informing on him to his superior. During these events Austra Skujiņa writes her last published poem.

A young man - Rens arrives to the apartment building in microdistrict. Shutting himself off from the world around him, he settles in one of the apartments in the house, which only has a television and a collection of videotapes. Spending his days in the secluded environment, his only "guests" are the neighbor-woman in the opposite window of the house, the food delivery girl Mon and a dark being whose rare visits are unpredictable and yet closely related to the "burdens" the young man brought with him from the past. Over time, trust and affection for the not- so-talkative food delivery girl grows, and the connection between the apparitions in the apartment and Ren's guests becomes more and more obvious. The real begins to merge with the unreal, the stroboscopic fragmentaryness of consciousness drives Ren into a corner and he is forced to find a solution.

A chef named Ģirts from the countryside is encouraged to move to Rīga and open a new restaurant.

Drowning in unpaid bills, an actress-slash-waitress hatches a plan to rob her workplace. When the heist goes wrong, she must give the performance of a lifetime to clear her name.

Mr. Schmidt, a young man who is recovering from a recent nervous breakdown, arrives at a country manor. As he waits for the governess Mrs. Rosenbaum, Schmidt is scared by the gardener but then meets a bored, young woman, Vera, who kindly accompanies him through the house. Vera tells Schmidt about a great tragedy. Precisely three years ago, members of her aunt’s family passed away, but the bodies were never found. Mrs. Rosenbaum does not believe in the death of her relatives and continues to wait for their return. Coming close to madness, Mr. Schmidt escapes from the mansion, and the missing family members return from an actual hunting expedition. As it turns out, Miss Vera makes up legends because of boredom.

In 1873, brave men known as the New Latvians held the first-ever Latvian song festival under the watchful eye of oppressive censorship. This massive celebration, featuring 1,003 singers – both men and women – changed the course of the nation’s history. It stands as a unique example of non-violent resistance in the fight for freedom against imperialism, led by Latvia’s entrepreneurs, writers, publicists and ordinary villagers.

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

A future husband has been chosen for Princess Alda; it is Prince Magnus. The King is getting ready for his daughter’s wedding and handing down the crown to his future son-in-law. Government ministers and advisors are making preparations for the royal nuptials. A circus troupe also arrive for the celebrations. A chance meeting between the Princess and a circus artist in the palace garden threatens to disrupt the wedding plans. The stranger gives the Princess a heart as a gift – because she does not know what that is. There is order in her father’s kingdom, and there is security – but no-one has a heart. The heart allows the Princess to talk with the grass, the trees and toads, and the silenced child inside her starts to remember her late mother. When the King discovers that, he gives an order to cut it out of her chest, but the royal husband-to-be hides the girl to fight for her new-found heart.

Pigtail loves the winter holidays, but this year, shortly before Christmas, Brother comes into the world, turning everything upside down. Grandmother arrives from the countryside, because Pigtail’s parents no longer have time to take her skating, but Pigtail and her best friend, Mr. Sleeplessness, don’t like the new order. They come up with a plan – to send Brother and Grandmother to the Moon, in a bid to reclaim parental attention.

Forty years have passed, and the protagonist meets his childhood fear - an animated character named Honka.

In a cabin in the woods, an eerily pale woman holds a mysterious casket, a dark liquid dripping from her fingers. Inside a car wash, a driver looks for dead ones on his tablet. What’s the connection between them?

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.

In two monumental symbols of the national awareness sculptor Kārlis Zāle has immortalized his vision about the state of Latvia. Freedom Monument is the statement of the sculptor’s love for his native country. Kārlis Zāle with his characteristic monumental touch sees life in large and powerful lines; the same way he perceives also sculpture that requires much vital force and daring. The full-length documentary “The Wounded Rider” is based on facts from the life of the sculptor Kārlis Zāle and documents on the construction of the Freedom Monument, providing insight in the political and social scene of the age and presenting outstanding figures in the culture and art together with the ideals of that time.