Marta Grase

Journey of a woman on a writer's retreat, struggling with her identity as a closet homosexual. Her life unfolds through three love interests, one real, one a figment of her imagination and the third virtual - man, woman and AI.

Helēna feels unfulfilled in her marriage to Rihards, a university lecturer. Together with their children Ēriks and Maija, they go to their house in the countryside to renovate it as Helēna hopes to soon be able to organise dance retreats there. More surprising than the dreariness of their relationship are the creatures that inhabit their forest house – fleshy caterpillars in the wallpaper, slithering worms on the dinner plates, and stag beetles on the damp walls. As the terror of the insects takes hold, Helēna and Rihards each take up positions on opposing front lines in a war that also uncovers the children’s phobias and losses they have not yet processed.

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.