Mārcis Maņjakovs

Geneva, Switzerland 1935. The first European Basketball Championship is about to take place. Basketball is still an unknown sport in Europe, and the national teams are meeting for the first time. Each wants the honour of being the first champion. Meanwhile in Latvia, coach Baumanis is convinced that he can assemble a team and take it to Geneva. He quickly learns however, that triumph and defeat are also part of the game. Coach Baumanis faces many difficulties, as well as unexpected help from those closest to him.

In the near future of 2012, the government asks for each citizen to have 30 Lats on their credit card. Anybody not having this amount of money is deemed to be maliciously poor and arrested.

After his wife kicks him out of the house, an elderly, anti-social and quite conservative man Arvīds decides to reconnect with his grandson by staying with the boy and his mother. Not keen on their lifestyle, the old man tries hard to accept all the eccentricities of the young and liberal. Fortunately for him, a warm-hearted friend of Arvīds’ ex-daughter-in-law is always around to help and he seems to be a natural when it comes to children and other stubborn people. When Arvīds finds out that the young man is gay, he decides he has had enough. Often, life is not that much about finding your place, as about learning how to share that place with others. This short film is a light and playful experience, looking into the definition of “normal” that varies so strongly from generation to generation.

Based on a Soviet propaganda story about Young Pioneer (the Soviet equivalent of a Boy Scout) Morozov, who denounced his father to Stalin’s secret police and was in turn killed by his family. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to become informers, at any expense. In our film, 75 years later, we call him little Janis. He is a Pioneer who lives on the Soviet collective farm “Dawn”. His father is an enemy of the farm (and the Soviet system) and plots against it. Little Janis betrays his father; his father takes revenge upon his son. Who then in this old Soviet tale is good and who is bad? This film reveals that a distorted brain is always dangerous. Even today.

On May 4th 1994, the 4th anniversary of Latvia’s splintering from the Soviet Union, rookie police investigator Aldis Karklins is tasked with solving the murder of Natalia Nolle, an influental behind-the-scenes political figure. The trail leads the 23-year-old Aldis in to the underbelly of organized crime and KGB conspiracies that outlive the Soviot Union. A miniseries in seven episodes, based on the novel "Don't Call Me, Don't Look for me! Life of Soviet Secret Agent" (Meklējiet sievieti) by acclaimed Latvian crime fiction writer Andris Kolbergs.

Likteņa Līdumnieki