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.

Every day, come rain or shine, Theodore used to bike the seven kilometres from his house to the centre of the village to sit and drink beer in the bus stop. For him, no doubt, this place was the centre of the Universe. With his death, the centre has moved elsewhere, and the bus stop is just a bus stop again.

A cinematic journey into one of the greatest European noble families, the Radziwiłłs. Even the King would stand up when Radziwiłł the Black entered the room. Members of the Radziwiłł family weren’t afraid to defend the Reformers when the fires of the Inquisition burned across Europe. It was a Radziwiłł who went on one of the most challenging pilgrimages from Vilnius to Jerusalem and then published an account, becoming the pioneer of travel literature. A mix of documentary and fiction, past and present, and history and its re-enactment, brings to life the essence of a once-popular saying: “I don’t want to be a king. I want to be a Radziwiłł.”

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.

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.

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.

Little kids, big dreams and smashingly good music – Dixieland follows the amazing progress of four members of a Ukrainian children’s brass band from Kherson. Through steady practice under the wildest of conditions, Roman (12, trumpet), Polina (10, trombone, drums and many other instruments), Nikita (12, drums) and Nikita (14, piano) produce magical music with ancient, wobbly instruments. Not least due to their wit and good humor, they persevere together, helped along by their 80+-year-old conductor and a young teacher. These children of the post-Soviet provinces use American tunes to achieve their dream – to become someone in the world and make something of their lives, no matter how dire the circumstances. From the authors of an awards winning documentary film Ukrainian Sheriffs.

“TESA MAN” is a music film – a poetic exploration of the relationship between collective creativity and the natural world. The film blurs the lines between reality and imagination, inviting viewers into an animistic experience where music performed by the band Tesa in a frozen Baltic landscape attempts to transform air, steam, ash and clay into something much more alive.

The dance of life and death, with humanity entering the fray. An artist, a zoologist, a nature scholar, and a sheep farmer working in the IT sector, who also happens to be an astronomy enthusiast, all view the demise of biological bodies differently. Forest carrion, larvae under tombstones, sheep in the barn, layers of feathers and bones, and shimmering green flies on decaying flesh – amidst all this is a human trying to understand their place in cosmology. In this grand tapestry of transformation, what is the human species: part of a cycle or more akin to superhuman?

In this allegory about paradise lost, Ildze yearns to find peace and fulfilment by moving from the city to the countryside. However, her thoughts are consumed by the illness of her child, her estrangement from her husband and his absence. In the meantime, Ildze’s grief is enveloped by nature’s promise of comfort, which never arrives. She tries to understand where to find the beginning of the cycle of sacrifice and where to find its end. And who is her victim, or is it herself?

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?

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.

Inta is a brusque, crusty woman who lives alone on the edge of a picturesque marsh. One day her solitude is intruded upon by the arrival of a documentary filmmaker. In his eyes Inta is an outstanding would-be film protagonist but the wild woman would rather put a curse on the importunate intruder than let herself be filmed. But the filmmaker's persistence finally succeeds in melting the ice of Inta's heart... just in order to break it soon afterwards.

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.

Accomplished European scenographer and educator Andris Freibergs paints a self-portrait by shaping the stage for an imaginary production titled “Andris Freibergs”. He transforms himself into a space that contains close to eighty years worth of stunning success, tragic loss, birth and death. It is an attempt to create the perfect empty space – one that would simultaneously encompass everything and nothing, the beginning and the end.

Every spring the surroundings of the Lake Lubāns, the largest lake in Latvia, are in flood. The efforts to prevent the floods have been going on since the middle of the 19th century. Today the lake, encircled by dikes, no longer threatens the surrounding homesteads but the seeming safety has been bought for a very high price – destruction of the natural balance. Can the damage be remedied? Two Latvians will travel to the wetlands of Japan in search for a possible solution.

At the beginning of the 1960s, when the French pioneers of cinéma vérité set out to achieve a new realism, and when direct cinema in Québec began to vie for notice, the Baltics wit-nessed the birth of a generation of documentarists who favored a more romantic view of the world around them. This meditative documentary essay – from a Latvian writer and Lithuanian director whose composed touch has long dovetailed with the stylistically diverse works of the Baltic New Wave – pushes adroitly past the limits of the common his-toriographic investigation to create a portrait of less-clearly remembered filmmakers. The result is a consummate poetic treatment of the ontology of documentary creation. Also a cinematic poem about cinema poets.

While playing hide and seek, children discover unprecedented objects, places, and creatures behind the doors of an antique wardrobe! They find themselves in an unexpected universe full of colours and sounds, inhabited by beings both real and only encountered in fantasy. They, too, hide and seek each other throughout the year.