Patricio Guzmán on Arvo Pärt

IDFA has chosen Chilean director Patricio Guzmán as Guest of Honor. His films will be shown and he has been asked to make his Top Ten. At the link below you will find all 10 choices. To our pleasant choice he has chosen ”Arvo Pärt: 24 Preludes for a Fugue” that is a wonderful visit to the world of the world famous composer. Made by Dorian Supin in 2002, an Estonian as well, who is close to Pärt about whom many other documentaries have been made, in general superficial ”homages”. Guzmán writes this about Pärt:  

”This is one of many films that show the complex process of “artistic creation.” It’s a topic I often deal with in my film classes, because everyone wants to know the “secrets” of creation in general. And anyone who sees this documentary is fascinated. Arvo Pärt is a portrait of a mysterious man, who has the eyes and beard of a 12th-century prophet. The film follows Pärt over several years, during a particularly productive period of his life. He’s filmed while composing or practicing with the orchestra, and during various concerts, workshops and meetings. The director Dorian Supin has constructed the film in chapters that list the different nuances of the composer. He thus explores Pärt’s musical thoughts and inner world, and the way he conceives his music, trying to discover the secret of what makes it so captivating. Pärt was born in Estonia in 1935 but lives in Berlin. He has always sought to compose music steeped in a spirituality that seems to go back to the Middle Ages, without regard to contemporary trends. He has built a universe of sound outside of the present era. The film contains excerpts from masterpieces such as Tabula Rasa, Passio, Fratres, Orient et Occident, Cecilia, vergine romana and Como anhela la cierva.”

More Arvo Pärt is to be found in the film by Andy Sommer, Adams Passion, about the performance made by Robert Wilson and Arvo Pärt and  Günther Atteln’s The Lost Paradise, on the creation of this work. Colleague Allan Berg watched the films in 2016 and wrote three knowledgeable and enthusiastic blogposts in Danish. NB: Google Translate works fine from Danish to English.

Links to Guzmán’s Top Ten, to ”Adams Passion” and ”The Lost Paradise” and to the three texts by Allan Berg:   

https://www.idfa.nl/en/article/118859/my-selection-of-ten-films

http://www.adamspassion.de/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3495/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3504/

http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/3508/

IDFA: The Inheritance of War/ Thomas Heise

News from Amsterdam: A focus program at IDFA is called “It Still Hurts”. It ”presents a selection of 17 films from the last 35 years that cinematically explore the psycho-social-economic-political fallout of two world wars in particular, and the more concentrated (and clandestine) ones occurring on every continent.”

A quote from the always brilliant Pamela Cohn, who has written about the program, that is put together by IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia. Later I will write about the program and its films. The reason for now is that Cohn writes such a precise description of one of Thomas Heise’s many cinematic solutions:

”In Thomas Heise’s brilliant, monolithic film Heimat Is a Space in Time (2019), trains are the leitmotif throughout the fractured biography of Heise’s own Jewish intellectual heritage, starting with the expulsion of family members from Vienna in the late 1930s. Heise films train after train moving back and forth across the landscapes of his memories, the machines that moved millions of soldiers and prisoners to their deaths. Eventually, they morph into conveyances for modern industry, as trainloads of new automobiles take the place of human cargo, running on the very same tracks, the very same routes, relentlessly observing strict timetables of delivery and receipt…”

Two links below, one for the series and one for Cohn’s article, read it !

https://www.idfa.nl/en/selection/118587/focus-it-still-hurts

https://www.idfa.nl/en/search?page=1&type=all&q=pamela%20cohn%20inheritance

Thomas Heise: Heimat Is a Space in Time/ 1

HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME picks up the biographical pieces of a family torn apart through the end of the 19th and into the 20th century. It is about people who by chance found each other, only then to lose each other. Now it is their descendants, their children and grandchildren who are beginning to disappear.

This is all about speaking and silence. First love and happiness lost. Fathers and mothers, sons and brothers, the affairs, the hurt and the joy in landscapes of transition – each bearing the intertwining, hallmarks of their times. A collage of images, sounds, letters, diaries, notes, voices, fragments of time and space.

HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME is a journey of reflection of time and the love held within using sounds, images and language. Yet some of it shall remain forever lost. The material used in this film is what remains of my family. The remnants of those I knew, whose circumstances I had been part of or had otherwise experienced. Remnants that mirror history. A history that is just as much my own. (Thomas Heise)

Germany, 2018, 218 mins.

Waad al-Kateab & Edward Watts: For Sama

Waad al-Kateab, director and the woman behind the camera, the one who filmed and produced this film, puts a question to a nurse, who sits alone in the hospital in Aleppo. What’s wrong? After a while he responds: Children have nothing to do with this! He does so a bit into a heartbreaking documentary from hell on earth, Aleppo 2016, where child after child are being rushed in to be treated after they have been hit by bombs during the siege of the city. Many of them are dead. What did children have to do with these massacres? Nothing of course. Two brothers follow their dead third brother, with despair in their eyes. Their mother arrives. Another mother shouts to her dead child “I have milk for you”. Turning around to the camera “film, film this”.

Waad al-Kateab’s husband, the doctor Hamza – what a man, one of many heroes who help the injured 24/7 – worked in one hospital that was bombed, they move and find another place to set up a hospital, in constant danger. I dream red, Waad al-Kateab, says at some point – the images show blood being swept away from the floor. Doctor Hamza is reporting to the media, Waad is a journalist, who has been sending news to Channel4. They fall in love, get married and Sama is born, to whom the mother adresses her love and hope, an intelligent storytelling solution. As a viewer you are with the little girl and her parents hoping the best for her, even if “you Sama never cries like a child normally does”. And the camera follows another family as well, where a boy does not want to leave Aleppo at the same time as he talks about the many friends, who are not there any longer. The word is kliché… but the film is full of fine poetic moments that communicate “we want to survive” and of course “we want to fight the regime of Bashar al-Assad”.

“We won’t make it”, says Doctor Hamza, the father, “the regime is only one street away”. But they do get away with the last convoy out of Aleppo after a phone call to the Doctor from a UN representative, who conveys to them “the offer” from the Russians that they can leave Aleppo. They have no choice, Waad al-Kateab is pregnant again, “our future is no longer in our hands”, “saying goodbye is worth than death”, for once you see Doctor Hamza in tears, you understand why having watched an extraordinarily strong film that jumps in time to balance the dark and the light, to make the film bearable to watch one could also say. How much horror can a viewer cope with?

The film has already received 20 awards and has just been released in the UK. Below there is a link to a fine interview with the two directors and the Doctor. In this the latter mentions that what we experienced in Aleppo is now being repeated in Idlib. “The world is just ignoring us”, “where did we go wrong”!  

USA/UK, 2019, 95 mins.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/aug/25/for-sama-documentary-interview-waad-al-kateab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbmULjz1e6U

https://www.forsamafilm.com/

Nordisk Panorama Forum Day 2

I met Kim Christiansen  from DR TV Sales before the Forum started its second day at Amiralen in Malmö. I asked him which film was his best sell recently. To my pleasant surprise he said ”Cold Case Hammarskjöld” by Mads Brügger, a film with a non-mainstream storytelling, controversial also in subject, indeed a very good film, that Christiansen has sold to both broadcast and theatrical release. Brügger is a documentary director, who is mixing journalism and cinema and who likes to play with the medium.

Christoffer Guldbrandsen was the excellent journalist behind the first project

to be adressed to the decision makers. The project is confidential, the director was not present, he is in the US shooting, but I have to make a comment to what the DR commissioner Anders Bruus said, when he introduced Guldbrandsen as “an icon in Danish documentary”. God damn, he is not, as everyone could see from the trailer of the confidential journalistic project, and from his previous journalistic pieces about Danish politicians Naser Khader and Mogens Lykketoft. Icons in Danish documentary… Jon Bang Carlsen, Anne Wivel and Jørgen Leth. Carlsen was at the Forum pitching a new project at individual meetings together with his co-producers from Final Cut for Real, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Heidi Elise Christensen.

Sorry, had to get that comment out.

The second presentation – to continue my subjectivity – introduced a place, where I have been on holidays with good documentary friends from Lithuania: The beautiful Curonian Lagoon with dunes next to the Russian Kaliningrad. Using music of Estonian master composer Arvo Pärt the trailer to the film “Ribos” by Vytautas Puidokas, produced by Lukas Trimonis and with Belgian and Norwegian companies co-producing, was visual as almost all Lithuanian documentaries are, but not so clear when it comes to the story about ornithologists working on each side of the border, trying to find collaboration.

There was “Born to Struggle” by Swedish couple Nima Sarvestani and Maryam Ebrahimi, a film that has to be made. About “three post-genocide survivors”, who live inside the Kutupalang refugee camp in BanglaDesh. A film that wants to give “voice to the voiceless”. Strong trailer. Ayaz is looking for his little sister in a camp with 1,3 million refugees !

And there was Sami director Nils Gaup, who made the Oscar nominated « Pathfinder » in 1987 – edited by Danish Niels Pagh Andersen (the start of his career) – who came up with a crazy story from the art world, working title « Images of a Nordic Drama – Who is to Judge What True Art is ». Gaup talked about the « Munch Mafia » (see photo, thanks Robert Goodman), that did – and does – what it can to prevent paintings of the late Aksel Waldemar Johannesen to be exhibited, even if Much himself had talked positively about the paintings. The art collector Haakon Mehren is the man, who found Johannesen’s paintings and has organised exhibitions in Venice and wants to donate the collection to the city of Oslo. But the Munch Museum art people’s advice is « don’t accept the offer ». The trailer was full of humour that fits this absurd story that I am looking forward to see.

Staying in the art world I was also impressed by « The Choir ». Producer is the experienced, charismatic Swedish Stina Gardell with debut director Amanda Pesikan and Ellinor Hallin as cinematographer, whose work I admired last night in « Scheme Birds ». I asked my neighbour at the table in Amiralen, photographing filmmaker Robert Goodman what he thought of the camerawork in the trailer. Thumps up. And that is so important, when you are to film a choir and catch the emotions of the leader of the choir Cedwin. The film wants to take the audience behind the scene of a gospel choir to “raise questions about the human need for togetherness and spirituality ». The director has followed the choir for five years and now they are off to Chicago, the home of gospel, where Cedwin hopes that the members of the choir will understand the Christian background for the music. Conflict, drama, music.

« Fly so Far » takes us to El Salvador, where a group of women have been imprisoned because of miscarriage. Teodora is the character to carry the story. She is in her mid-thirties, was imprisoned and released in 2018, now she is an activist, who has presented the terrible stories at the European Parliament. The director, Celina Escher, has been filming for 2 years, the editing is being finished. If the film keeps what it promised with the trailer, it’s an obvious choice for DocsBarcelona 2020. This year the festival showed « La Cachada », also from El Salvador, also  about a group of women, who fight injustice in a patriarchal society.

Anorak Films is of course based in Nuuk and it was the right choice to have a Greenlandic project to close the Forum 2019. With a very strong character Aaju Peter, who fights for the right of the inuits in Greenland and Arctic Canada in a film that has the title « Twice Colonised ». The camera likes her to use a cliché and the filmmaker Lin Alluna does not refrain from – in the trailer – showing that Aaju Peter has/has had alcohol problems after her son took his own life in 2018. « She’s a natural born storyteller », you feel that and I would love to see that film finished and bring it to the festivals I am involved in, when it is finished in 2021.

Those – I could have mentioned more – were my choices for this report. Now for some grumpy comments/suggestions that came to my mind during these two days:

Is it really necessary to have all funders sitting with the filmmakers giving their reasons for ”being on board”? Most of them just say ”amazing”, ”unique”, ”fantastic” – words to that effect. Minutes could be saved for the filmmakers/the decision makers?

Why are there so few, actually noone this year, who break the rules and start showing the trailer right up front and then talk afterwards. Convince the audience, catch our attention, it’s (also) a show for those of us, who are not at the table. Who observe. Show us that you know how to use the film language.

It is not very good that many at the table on this second day said “we met yesterday”, “we have been in touch before” – it lowers the intensity of the discussion and you wonder, what the conversations were about at the meetings. And it limits the flexibility of the poor moderators, as so much seems to be pre-arranged on who to ask.

Thank you for the invitation, dear Anita Reher. And good luck to the filmmakers! And bravo organisers to have so many documentary interested people listening, watching and commenting for two days.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/forum/forum-projects/

Ellen Fiske & Ellinor Hallin: Scheme Birds

Just came back from a screening of a wonderful film about Gemma from Motherwell in Scotland – and her friends and family who happen to live in a place, where ”there is nothing”; well once there was a steel industry but when that was closed during Thatcher nothing came instead and the young ones grow up without work in terrible skyscrapers that will be taken down. In these surroundings drug and alcohol abuse florish.

It is a sad and heartbreaking social story with Gemma as the one, who survives all the obstacles as the young mother of Liam, whose father does not see his child; well he did in the beginning but then he dropped out and Gemma kicked him out. Pat is the name of the father of Liam, JP is their friend who is one day attacked seriously, taken to hospital, lies in coma, comes out having a head operation, paralysed and now 24/7 taken care of by his mother. And there is Amy, JP’s girl friend, who does not think he will ever survive the attack, so she meets another guy and gets pregnant…

Gemma… it is first of all a film about Gemma, the girl with fear in her eyes, fragile but also strong and dedicated. She observes and analyses her own situation, cuts links to her family or rather is cut out by her family, i.e. her ”papa”, grandfather, who runs a small boxing club and whose passion is pigeons. He sets them free, he holds pigeon beauty contests, he is a warm and caring person. The one Gemma can lean on.

A social documentary made with warmth and no finger-pointing, skillfully told, totally emotional, had to take away tears from my eyes many times during the film. Ken Loach would have chosen fiction to tell this story, the Swedish female directors let reality write the dramatic and moving script.

Sweden, 2019, 90 mins.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/festival/festival-2019/docs-in-competition-2019/

Nordisk Panorama Forum Day 1

”Karaoke is the best thing that has happened to Finland” was the point made in the humorous pitch that was the last one of this first pitching day at the Nordisk Panorama Forum in Malmö. The presentation had the show element that you are longing listening to 12 projects being pitched. You can’t avoid that some of the 15 minutes presentations become a bit boring and full of klichés, so the Finnish team from Napafilms (Marianne Mäkelä and Einari Paakkanen) gave the day a good ending with ”Mother Karaoke” about a handful of characters, who sing for different reasons. The team entered the room singing, “Stand by Me” of course, that dramaturgical take of the day was perfect.

It was the 26th edition of the Nordisk Forum in Malmö (the festival celebrates

its 30th edition). 24 projects to be pitched in two days with many more invited to one-to-one meetings “outside the plenary”. 26 decision makers at the table, half of them commented on the films, the other half just sat there. The moderating Danes Gitte Hansen and Mikael Opstrup did what they could to create a good relaxed atmosphere, they are (too?) kind and polite to the panelists, and with the 7 minutes there is for the Q&A, it leaves time for 6-7 comments. Of different quality and relevance. That’s how it is in pitching sessions. Has to be said that the very well organised Nordisk Forum organises individual meetings for all pitching teams, where also the non-speakers at the panel and several other broadcasters, sales agents and film consultants present in the room can have a dialogue with the filmmakers. Maybe some critical remarks come up here, that can help the filmmakers to re-think.

Everyone in the plenary is positive with their comments and everybody knows the rules of the game. Even if it’s called a forum for co-financing, the funding process is slow, i.e. contacts are made and eventual contracts come later. Eventual… many of the kind words never get to something concrete. The money is limited. OR contacts have already been made, broadcasters and production teams know each other so it is just a matter of time before a contractual agreement is set up. It is also a Nordic family gathering as a broadcaster said to me.

Also the start of the day was fine. Danish Simon Lereng Wilmont returns to the Eastern part of Ukraine. His presentation was great, both verbal and visual, and the comments were very positive, also because his masterpiece “Distant Barking of Dogs” was well known at the table, not to forget – as Danish Film Institute consultant Cecilia Lidin said – that Wilmont with other films shown has shown his talent for dealing with children. Because this is what “A House Made of Splinters” is about: An orphanage for children in a war zone, taken away from their homes to have a safe place in the Donbass region. Production company Final Cut for Real, producer Monica Hellström. A winning team as someone said.

You have to be careful using the word “artistic” in fora, I have been told, so let me characterise two films as Cinema: Meant for the big screen and/or constructed as a theatrical narrative and/or with a special feeling for the image and sound, film language in other words.

Local director Magnus Gertten and his producer Ove Rishøj Jensen presented “Nelly and Nadine” (photo) that I have written about earlier (http://www.filmkommentaren.dk/blog/blogpost/4478/ “The unique material shows liberated concentration camp survivors coming to Malmø in 1945. One of the prisoners, an Asiatic looking woman, had been in the mind of the director for years, who is she, what is her story. At a screening in France the director was approached – I think I can help you, a viewer said – and what came out of this was an amazing, fascinating story about two women, who fell in love with each other in Ravensbrück. Archive photo from the lives of the two in France was found…”. Excellent presentation, excellent teaser. Looking fwd. to an excellent film.

How do you evaluate the potential of a film from a 7 minutes presentation? I am always asking myself: Is there a cinematic quality in the visuals, does the director convince you with his/her way of talking, do you sense it is important for him or her – and of course has he/she made something valuable in beforehand. Danish Andreas Koefoed is for me a big talent, one of the best in his generation with (the words of his producer Sara Stockmann) “an extremely sensitive eye”. A Filmmaker. His “The Fall” that is in production has been shot over two years. It’s about a young girl in transition as said Cecilia Lidin from the Danish Film Institute, a girl who survived a fall from the fifth floor in her home, when she was five years old. Now she is on her way to adulthood. I loved his “At Home in the World”, “Albert’s Winter”. High expectations for this one, indeed.

“Utøya Survivors”… Norwegian of course, from Fenris Film and Motlys (directors Aslaug Holm and Sigve Endresen) is one of those projects, where you need to take a deep breath after the presentation. It is a film that has to be made and it is in good hands with the two mentioned directors. I have known Endresen since Nordisk Panorama started 30 years ago. You play safe with him. The film follows four young women, survivors, who have taken on their shoulders to fight racism and fascism. Brave strong women!

And the Icelandic “Raise the Bar” with lovely Margret Jónasdóttir, who I have known for at least 20 years – as producer for a film featuring a team of girls who has a tough coach and is about to change basketball in Iceland. Powerful presentation by Jónasdóttir and her director Gudjon Ragnarsson, who showed emotions when talking about the girls and their ambition. And there were clips from parents, who do not “always understand what is going on”… I was thinking about the Polish “Over the Limit”, there is a lot to discuss about pedagogics, when you see the coach in action but… fascinating.

Questions were asked if this film could fit an international audience. Of course good films will travel. Or am I naïve?

Tomorrow 12 more projects from the North. Words, clips, comments from NRK, YLE, DR, ZDF/Arte (Sabine Bubeck), RTS Switzerland (Gaspard Lamunière), the film institutes and Karolina Lidin as the last to comment as the Nordisk Film/TV Fond gives completion funding.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/forum/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nordisk Panorama: dok.incubator

Full house at 9.30 in the morning at Panora Cinema in Malmö. As in previous years dok.incubator offered the audience of festival people, sales agents, broadcasters and fellow filmmakers « an exclusive showcase of eight outstanding documentary features just before their premiere” as it is written at the site of ”the institution”. Because this is what Czech Andrea Prenghyova and her team has made the dok.incubator. An institution… that with help of excellent editors and developers help films to be finished. She proudly told the audience about what films participating in previous editions have achieved in terms of distribution all over the world. Amazing it is and no doubt that a film that has been at dok.incubator has good chances to get into IDFA to mention an example of a festival every young and new filmmaker wants to be at.

That does not mean that all was appreciated by this blogger. Andrea Prenghyova, with whom I worked for many years within the Ex Oriente

workshop, knows that I think the presentation is much too formatted: Hello presentation from a tutor, hello from one from the film team, then a trailer, some words again, and then two scenes and some final words about what they are looking for and when the film will be ready. For one sitting in the cinema it feels much too schematic, why not, as a colleague said to me, in some cases, show the first 10 minutes of the fine or rough cut that exists as the films are close to be finalised. Or drop the trailer and show longer scenes… Break the rules.

Anyway, let me mention 3 of the 8 projects that I liked and think/hope will end up as good films with several layers:

”On Your Marks” (Slovakia/Czech Republic) by Mária Pinciková is about the Sokol movement ”that gathers thousands of people every six years in Prague to creative impressive mass performances”. It is full of humour, it has two characters – a young man who does not really know how to flirt with a girl, and who has a strong mother – and an older man, who has been part of Sokol for a long time and who is not content with the way the parade down towards Moldau river is performed. Growing-up. Post-communism. Czech humour as we know it from Forman and Menzel.

”Cuban Dancer” (Italy, Canada, Chile) by Roberto Salinas – it was at DocsBarcelona a couple of years ago and if the material shown here ”keeps its promise”, a fine film will be there about the young man, who goes from Cuba to the USA to make a career as a top dancer.

”The Earth is Blue as an Orange” (Ukraine/Lithuania) by Iryna Tsilyk – I saw it in Kiev at the DocuDays, I still can’t see the final film from what was presented here in Malmö, maybe in that case would have been better with the start of the film but still the scenes presented were full of energy and atmosphere, so hoping it will be put well together at the end. I understand that the sales agent CAT&Docs has signed up for the film.

www.dokincubator.net

Nordisk Panorama Sunday and a Look Back

Checked in at Scandic Hotel last night, 16th floor, amazing look at Malmö, which is not the case this morning, where fog is covering the view. Today I am going to the DocIncubator presentation as usual. Always interesting to see what is coming up and there might be films that fit in the Magnificent7 or DocsBarcelona, the two festivals where I am part of the programming. And later – see post below – at the hotel there will be the archive one-hour seminar “Getting Creative with Archive”, with the two Finnish filmmakers Laura Horelli (Newstime) and Arthur Franck (The Hypnotist), accompanied by Swedish editor Hanna Lejonquist (I Called Him Morgan) and me as moderator. Join the discussion!

Nordisk Panorama (NP) celebrates its 30th anniversary! I am not sure how many of them I have attended but looking at the list of winners, brings good memories. Among the many awarded in 1990, the first edition, were the animated masterpiece by (late) Lejf Marcussen “The Public Voice”, built on a painting by Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux – it was produced by DR (Danmarks Radio), Marcussen was employed and the broadcaster gave him time and salary to make this film. Later on, in the process of cutting down in finances that still goes on in DR, he was sacked. “Too expensive to have this luxury” were the words not expressed.

If you go to https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/festival/news/winners/ you will find the list of winners and if I continue the nostalgic look on 1990 there is also documentaries like Ulla Boje Rasmussen’s „1700 Metres from the Future” from the Faroese Islands and Sigve Endresen’s „For Your Life” about drug abuse, both of high quality. The two shared the main award.

NP gives you the chance to look back, go to festival centre and pick your VHS-cassette at the Nordisk Panorama Time Machine. Great idea, I will check it out.

https://nordiskpanorama.com/en/festival/programme-2019/

The festival started a couple of days ago, „my” festival starts today.  

Elita Klavina: Zoryana Horobraya

When in Riga for the Baltic Sea Docs, producer Antra Gaile told me about a film that she and Liga Gaisa joined as co-producers, directed by actress Elita Klavina, whose diploma work from the Latvian film school it is. I received a link as I could not attend the Message2Man Festival in Saint Petersburg, where the film had its world premiere this week:

It is a fine piece of observational documentary. Through several seasons the director has returned to the house in the countryside, where Zoryana Horobraya lives with her husband, a boy, and later one more little boy, and her mother, who is the one, who built the house and set up a small paradise for herself and her family, the right place for children to grow up, close to nature with huge acres as their playground. But it is far away from the city and to bring up a family you need money, and money you earn in the city… A classic conflict, city-countryside, becomes in the film, where you are very close to the family, precisely a conflict in the family. Granny is not happy that the family – her daughter-the husband-the two small kids – moves to Riga.

You get very close to the family. The camera catches all the details of the house and the naked kids running around among cats and dogs and goats. The grandmother talks with passion about the freedom she enjoys away from the crowded, stressed city-life, she is proud of her place, and afraid, without saying so, to be left alone, actually quite bitter when they leave.

Here is the catalogue description from the festival M2M, that ends tomorrow : “Young Zoryana lives in the countryside with her husband Edgars and her mother. She does the housework, plays the piano, raises a child and works at a computer. This idyll has to end, though: the family wants to move to Riga, where her husband works at a fast food joint and urban conditions allow raising children “like everyone else.” Zoryana’s Russian mother dissuades her from living “in cages.” Zoryana is torn between the wishes of her husband and her mother…”.

The Russian festival also notes that the film unfolds the cultural differences, where the granny represents Russia and the daughter and her family the Latvia of today. Could be, but I don’t see that, I see a universal theme popping up.

Latvia, 2019, 61 mins.