fon Films

Captured by Borders is a film about travelling the world in old and transformed fire trucks. They have been in more than 100 countries, on five continents, driven for more than 100 000 kilometres. As a result, we were confident that no one could stop us. Until the fire trucks were blocked on the border between China and Vietnam. By one of the most difficult border crossings in the world. After almost eight years, a rescue expedition leaves Latvia to bring the fire trucks home. How will they fare? That’s what this adventure documentary is about.

The selection time is soon approaching for the national Song and Dance festival. A choir is short on male singers, so the conductor pays a taught singer to join them and help them succeed. The professional singer and the amateurs don't get along too well.

Imants Veide is writing a script about con artists and their schemes. Together with his friend Harijs Kuharjonoks he's trying them out for real for greater authenticity, but gets too entangled in real criminal schemes. More and more colorful characters appear on the horizon, but Imant's main adversary on the road to criminal excellency is his Neighbour, a true iron lady with balls bigger than all those involved combined.

In this short musical, Kristīne, a young Music Academy graduate, has been offered to conduct two male choirs that are very different from each other. Akmins is a friendly countryside choir of older gentlemen, while Bāliņš is a choir of hip and slightly snobbish young guys.

A young choir conductor is overcome by nerves right before his choir has to undergo the ultimate test - get through the selection for the national Song and Dance Festival. However, the old piano-tuner Frolova, who lives in the basement, might have a recipe for overcoming the stress... Her method has saved generations of Latvian choir conductors.

In the north of Latvia, in Drusti, there is "Savvaļa", a place where art and untamed nature meet. The young artist Katrina grew up here, for whom the forest is a place to find one's way, not to get lost. "Umbra" is a poetic documentation of the open-air art space created by the painter Andris Eglītis and his associates through Katrīna's personal experience and the scope of the world of the detached painter. It is a story about a community of artists and their creative everyday life – full of both joy and doubt.

It's 1985, and Latvia is still under the Soviet occupation. Haralds Mednis, acclaimed Latvian choral conductor, is expelled from participating at the National Song and Dance festival, and a symbolic Latvian song "Gaismas pils" ("Castle of Light") is excluded from the programme of the festival. However, the choirs and the public shout out Haralds Mednis's name and try to get him to conduct "Gaismas pils", in spite of the censors. This film is an attempt to imagine what the people working for the state apparatus tasked with oppressing any rebellious actuons might have felt at that moment back in 1985.

An Australian Latvian comes to Latvia, eager to participate in the national Song and Dance Festival. He is alone, without his own dance group - how far will he go to get accepted in a local dance group?

Anete lives next to the Daugava National Stadium, where rehearsals for the National Song and Dance Festival take place all day long, so the melody of "Cūkas driķos" is her constant soundtrack. Her boyfriend accidentally leaves her locked in the flat, "Cūkas driķos" keeps blasing through the window, and she's about to lose it.