Eiropas dokumentālā kino simpoziji

Uldis Brauns' conversation with Ivars Seleckis about films and time.

Historical reenactment of preparation in Nov. 17 and proclamation of independence of Latvia in Nov. 18, 1918 and in epicenter is only taken photograph of this historical moment.

The story of rural people in 2004 - at the time when Latvia joined the European Union. A thorough study of the situation in rural Latvia over the course of the last thirty years, where the conflict between the familiar and the new, and desire and opportunity has fostered creative thinking in farmers looking to be masters of their own land. In the film we see a German farmer who bought property in Latvia; the head of a large parish; a family of young former citizens; eco lifestyle supporters - soybean growers, including an organic farm and its owner who takes a loan from a bank for the first time.

Ten years have passed since we made the film “Crossroad Street”, about a small street in the suburbs of the city of Riga. Now we’ve come back. Perhaps it was a sense of duty, perhaps nostalgia that brought us back – who knows? Perhaps it was both. Daiga, Aldis, Osis – they’re all our people. The first film had an impact on both the filmmakers and the residents of Crossroad Street. We found friends whom we want to meet again and again. Society has become more prosperous, several value systems coexist side-by-side. People often live in these systems as though they were in different worlds that never meet. We felt that the world inhabited by our people is sinking into oblivion, and so we wanted to show that it still has its own turbulence, that Crossroad Street resembles Latvia’s palm – the place where a fortune teller can see the lines of its destiny.

This is the 3rd film in almost 30 years about the daily lives of the people living in this small street of Pārdaugava. We first met them in the late 1980s when the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. We visited them again in the wild 1990s. And now we meet them in 2013, again in a whole different world.

The fates of the students involved in the Latvian educational system reforms and that of their teacher – the screenwriter and film director, Tālivaldis Margēvičs, are unusually intertwined. This leads to thoughts on various, current integration problems and on universal human values.