Jānis Jarāns

Latvian friends are helping to Estonian rock group to participate in the music competition.

An ancient Latvian folk tale is the basis for this colorful animated feature in the tradition of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. A vengeful sorceress casts a kingdom’s princess into a deep sleep at the top of an icy mountain, where she awaits release from the spell that will destroy the land. Of all the men vying for the honor, the shy outcast son of a family of thugs is the most unlikely. Director Kalnaellis brings a playful sense of humor to the characterizations and adds zippy contemporary elements including a chorus of wisecracking crows. (Gene Siskel Film Center)

Three unrelated sci-fi stories that depict people’s search for happiness.

A surreal drama about the Painter, who tries his best to get into the Vienna Academy of Arts. The process of application is not easy, as he shares his living space with the crazy Postman, who delivers him a daily dose of derogatory letters.

Cheerful, yet obedient Mareks is preparing to celebrate his bachelor party, which is not very pleasing to his dominating fiancée Ilze - in her opinion, everything must be perfect and tasteful. However, the event planned by Mareks and his friend Koļa turns out to be a complete disaster, resulting in Ilze breaking up with Mareks and calling off the wedding. Nevertheless, Mareks does not give up and, together with Koļa and the accidentally met Tīna, goes on a journey full of crazy situations to win back his bride.

When a chicken is kidnapped by two thieves, a lively adventure full of humor and with a surprising twist begin.

Young Juris is being raised by his mother alone in a rural village. She is in love with Jānis, a collective farm driver, and the two plan to get married. As the wedding approaches, Juris prepares a special secret gift for them—a “sun candle” plant he is growing in a forest clearing.

Ernests (70) and Alvine (64), two married postal workers, have developed a scheme to win a trip to Rome, but Alvine's rapidly progressing Alzheimer's disease complicates their plan.

On the eve of their 20th wedding anniversary, a wife finds out her husband has a lover who wants to buy him from her. The wife agrees.

It is year 1994. Spring. In Jelgava – a small town in Latvia. Jānis (14) – behaves well at school, shows interest in all subjects, and studies well. His mother loves him very much. There are exactly two things happening in one day, which change his life completely. One – a new girl, Kristīne (15), comes to his class and attracts everybody’s attention immediately. And second– Kurt Cobain commits suicide. Until this moment Jānis does not know anything neither about Nirvana, nor about Cobain. But very soon he finds out.

A miniseries about the events during one summer in a family of a writer who are unexpectedly granted a remote estate with all its unusual inhabitants, and who has to decide what to do with the dilapidated estate. Exciting and comic events in eight episodes in which the future writer Anšlavs Eglītis together with his brother Vidvuds, father Viktors and his wife Hilda Vīka, begin the restoration of the estate, at the same time opening a boarding house, which becomes the intersection and summer stage of the neighbourhood, ghosts of the past, visitors from the city and Latvian intellectuals in Latvia in the 1920s.

In the late 1970s – at a time when the fiercest propaganda against Western culture was being waged throughout the USSR – an ardent rock and roll fan sets up a successful and illegal underground jeans factory in a Latvian psychiatric hospital.