VFS Films

A local guide is asked to lead a group of influencers along the river of a remote valley. As they get deeper into the wilderness, their venture takes a frightening turn.

They're called water carriers, domestics, 'gregarios', 'Sancho Panzas' of professional cycling. Always at the back of the group, with no right for a personal victory. These wonderful losers are the true warriors of professional cycling.

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.

Instead of Einars Pelšs' eighth poetry book, he publishes his collected works, but the buyer of the book receives an ordinary brick. He translates the authors of the Russian Golden Age and publishes them under his own name, challenging the boundaries of literature. Is a poet who makes fun of art unique or exactly what we expect from contemporary authors? Einarrative is an extraordinary story that portrays the narrative of the life of Einārs Pelšs. In the film, this narrative is an experience of contrasting changes both in its visual style and in Einars’ poetic works and personality, allowing him to get involved in the depiction of the narrative himself, making the film as Einārs Pelšs' audiovisual collected works.

What draws thousands of people to leave everything behind and venture out into Siberian taiga, following Visarion, an ex-agent of the Soviet police who proclaims to be Jesus? The film tries to answer this question, showing the construction of the New Jerusalem, a resettlement «destined» to become the birthplace of a new civilization after the imminent apocalypse takes place.

A laid-back journey in search of one of the world’s most fascinating families, observed and examined from within its most intimate relationships, where the truth and depth of a memoir meet the ironic tone of an indie comedy.

The code to unlocking this feature documentary is 1949, the year the director was born, and also the year of the return of Soviet repressions to Latvia. The film tells a very personal story against the background of less visited historic events – the death of director’s father due to the KGB repressions, which is closely linked to the devious game Soviet Latvia’s KGB played against Swedish-British-American spy agencies.

The film tells a story about the latest musical revolution in recent history – the early days of the rave scene and the golden age of techno culture. International political changes in the mid-80s and early 90s, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a short period of time allowed this cultural phenomenon to become a mass movement which was almost completely independent from the global corporations and which did not fight with the system but created its own system.

More than twenty years after Vladimir Putin came to supreme power in Russia on May 7, 2000, Russian society is deeply divided. A young, modern generation opposes the growing repression by the regime, which still retains the support of many members of previous generations. Who are these ordinary citizens who dream of living in a different Russia? What price will they have to pay to achieve the freedom and justice they so desire?

Apatity, a far-north industrial town in Russia, first came into being as a USSR concentration camp. Although its environment is at the brink of ecological disaster, the people here still believe in the state’s promise of immortality that can be gained through sacrificial service to the fatherland. This is how the elite in a totalitarian state buy a person’s will, strength, talent and, indeed, life, turning the human being into another resource that is as faceless as a grey lump of ore. ‘I cannot fight big corporations or state structures with a film. But I hope that there is someone in the darkness of the cinema whose heart will get a bit warmer after seeing it,’ says the director. The larger part of the film was shot during the polar night.

Latvian artist Gustavs Klucis embraced the technological revolution of the early 20th century and applied it to his art, becoming a classic of Russian constructivism. He created photo-montage and Lenin’s public image, and became the most important Soviet artist. Killed by Stalin’s regime, his artistic career poses many unanswered questions. This documentary reveals many secrets and intimate moments of his dramatic personality – the unequal duel between the Artist and the Power.

When Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985, his reform policy sparked an independence movement in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But as cries for help from the Baltic States were met with silence from the international community at large, two small nations – Iceland and Denmark – answered the call, motivated by the personal connections of their foreign ministers, Jón Baldvin Hannibalsson and Uffe Elleman Jensen.

The narrow, sandy strip of the seashore is a neutral zone that belongs equally to the sea and the mainland. This zone possesses an unusual chracteristic, namely, it attracts people with a practically magnetic power, transforming the beach into something like a playground where the old and the new, the primitive and the civilised, the traditional and the modern all coexist.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, I had my friends, but now they're dead.” When Anna Zaķis was young, she experienced the upswing of social networks. Once active cultural life has slowed down but the desire for real conversations is still there. She will fight to the end... for a chance to talk with someone.

Viktors is an entrepreneur with a unique offer – he has built a bar, bakery, spa, hotel and an auto-shop in a former “sovkhoz” cafeteria in the village of Lone. Viktors understands life, and that his words carry weight – almost 500 village inhabitants are now employed. Lone is a lively place both day and night, full of youths and many other businesses. Viktors is very proud.

Driving in their yellow Lada flying its own little Ukrainian flag, they travel from incident to incident – calming an angry neighbor, investigating the discovery of a body, struggling to unfold a stroller and attempting to re-integrate Vova, the freeloader who eats other people’s dogs but actually longs for a normal existence – just like everyone else here. The seasons pass until political developments reach the village by way of the TV screen, sowing separatist discord.

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.

Direct and meticulous observation of interpersonal relations is a classic subject in documentary films. In this film the title of which alludes to “Hamlet”, we will observe the birth of compassion in people. Compassion is something that has to be dealt with in very rigorous terms, something that needs to be stripped of the layers of clichés that this word has amassed over the years. Is it always a true feeling or just an imitation? How does a deep compassion spring forth? Who are the true “masters of compassion” and what are they like?

There is a popular Latvian folksong which begins with the phrase "I was singing out high on a mountain". The irony of it is that according to physical geography there are no mountains in Latvia. So what exactly is the place where the Latvians are "singing out"? It may be safely said that it's the same place where they are skiing. That's how we make mountains out of molehills...Snow-covered mountains, to be sure.