Baiba Broka

A documentary film about Stanislav Petrov, a former lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.

A love triangle - a terminally ill university teacher, a blind girl and a young bard. In the background of it all - the wild arrival of the capitalism, political conflicts, city life and the beautiful nature of Latvia. In the end love will conquer everything, though not everybody will live to witness that.

Everyone has their own emotional overwhelm regarding a bad smell. Lizete, an amateur interviewer, is eager to record the moments when it is revealed. Dealing with the topic of bad odour's influences on society, this is an animated short film for adults in the inquiring style of a documentary. The director continues to work on tragi-comic stories about our natural awkwardness while finding ourselves.

The 14th of June 1941, Soviet-occupied Latvia. Without warning, the authorities break into the house of Melanie and her husband Alexander, and force them to leave everything behind. Together with more than 15 000 Latvians, Melanie and her son get deported to Siberia. In her fight against cold, famine and cruelty, she only gains new strength through the letters she writes to Alexander, full of hope for a free Latvia and a better tomorrow.

Anita and her children, Santa and Kristaps, live in an apartment in Riga. Every year, they celebrate New Year’s Eve with grandma, uncle Peter and a feast fit for kings…

Helen suspects that her beloved son has a girlfriend what he is trying to hide. She is terrified of the possibility that her son could leave her for his girlfriend. Dainis invites her to a party in the hope that they both will be able to become friends, but due to missunderstanding a disaster strikes.

Forty years have passed, and the protagonist meets his childhood fear - an animated character named Honka.

An insecure millennial woman pursues her dream whilst learning how to adult. While being preoccupied with life tasks at hand she can barely handle and also severe depression, main character of this film Marta (30) keeps dreaming about making films, drawn to the healing power of storytelling, but not having the courage to act these dreams out; sometimes she is too scared to even pick up the phone. Marta’s life seems to sway both in comic and tragic directions: it’s sometimes a mix of ultimate freedom, sex, drugs, friendship, laughter, alcohol, lots of alcohol, music, honesty and love, and sometimes the reality Marta avoids to face becomes so brutal she can’t take it anymore. Through the course of the film Marta learns there is an unavoidable question that at some point becomes inevitable for almost every filmmaker: if you really want to direct films, can you first direct yourself out of depression?

A true story of a 17 going on 18 year-old boy called Modris. He’s a guy who goes to school, has a girlfriend and some good friends. He has a small gambling addiction, which makes his relationship with his mother difficult. It’s also hard because the two of them live alone and the mother doesn’t miss a chance to remind him that his father is in prison and that Modris has a bad gene. Their relationship boils over when, in the middle of a Nordic winter, Modris pawns his mother’s electric heater in trying to squeeze a win from a slot machine. She betrays him to the police and Modris is sentenced to two years’ probation. That is when his adventures with the Latvian justice system begin and he sets a new goal: to find the father he has never met.

Pigtail loves the winter holidays, but this year, shortly before Christmas, Brother comes into the world, turning everything upside down. Grandmother arrives from the countryside, because Pigtail’s parents no longer have time to take her skating, but Pigtail and her best friend, Mr. Sleeplessness, don’t like the new order. They come up with a plan – to send Brother and Grandmother to the Moon, in a bid to reclaim parental attention.

A young director, who sits in front of a commission defending a film based on her own experiences with sex and relationships, is continually confronted with questions about why she’s making the movie. The answer doesn’t come easy… Linde took on a difficult task for her short film.

Summer, 1989. City girls, Paula and Laura, spend their summer holidays in a small town with their cousins, Maija and Linda. Four girls, left unattended, enjoy freedom, imitate the life of adults, plunge into reckless adventures and get into trouble. Based on true events, nine-year-old Paula’s story of growing up is set against the background of time when Latvia made her first steps towards independence.

It is 1991 in Latvia and nineteen-year-old aspiring cinematographer Jazis’s whole world is thrown into chaos as he is dragged into the people’s peaceful protests against the Soviet Army’s attempted takeover of power in his country.

The parents have gone away, so the two sisters - Marta and Linda - need someone to take care of them. Their dictatorial spinster aunt Una, who desperately wants to get married, arrives to take on this job. Marta really wants a puppy, but her plan is ruined, as her aunt has a strong dislike for dogs. So, the relationship between the girls and Una becomes really tense. Until the perfect plan of the sisters emerges - to get rid of the aunt by helping her to get married.

After recovering from an overseas mission, Krists Lapins moves into a quiet neighbourhood in Riga. His hopes for a new, peaceful life are disrupted when an unexpected visitor arrives one night. Krists soon finds himself in a swirl of events involving a mysterious blonde, a wannabe private detective, a bankrupt millionaire, and a rigorous cop. In this witty portrayal of modern Latvian society the absurd meets the comic and nothing is what it seems.

Auditors arrive at a cryonics lab. One of the frozen subjects is missing.

Ainars has been a principal of a local music school for forty years until he is unexpectedly fired. Ainars feels betrayed. Seeing him unhappy, his wife Anita decides to act. When the new principal candidate arrives at the music school, the world created by the two of them collapses. The new suppresses the old and it just seems that everything that has been done before is left in vain.

Three sisters, dead broke and disconnected from each other, travel around Europe with their mother’s corpse on top of their van, trying to minimize transportation costs. The trio has to talk, reminisce and maybe even admit that underneath their fantasies of perfection — these are women in a desperate search for freedom.

Alice von Trota returns to her father’s manor in Latvia in 1919 to sell it and start a new life. She meets the hostile resistance of the local workers and discovers she has been lured into a carefully tailored trap set by a demonic lawyer, a decadent underground organisation and its necrophile leader. While escaping the clutches of her “helpers”, she meets some silent-cinema enthusiasts and learns to use the cinematograph as a tool for healing and self-discovery, as a weapon against her enemies and as a way to create a masterpiece.

The shy scientist Lars decides to publish a small ad in order to find a girlfriend. From the 218 replies, he selects Brigita, an attractive Latvian woman and invites her to Stockholm. But what actually happens after Brigita's arrival is far more complicated than Lars could ever have imagined.

A couple that does not fit into society’s accepted norms regarding women and men. Routine problems of everyday life that tend to take on immeasurable amplitudes push the film’s leads into a most intimate confinement, one in which thoughts and the answers to problems lead to dreams.

After hearing many success stories about direct sales companies, Roberts decides to try his luck in selling vacuum cleaners door to door. On the first work day he finds out about the possible bonus in case of at least 2 successfully closed sales deals. At a glance the task seems quite easy. Once Robert faces the reality in a block of flats and encounters its peculiar inhabitants, the task no longer seems to be so simple.

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.

A Latvian series shot by the team at Jaunais Rīgas Teātris / New Riga Theatre over the course of summer 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. It's a story about a world that once again changes rapidly. About the belief that everything on this planet is subject to manipulation. The series centers around an advertising agency - a classic office where professionalism mixes with boredom, romance and an existential tiredness.

A story about Emīlija Benjamiņa, the “queen of the press” in interwar Latvia, whose wealth and tragic fate have since become folklore. The film’s narrative covers the period from the beginnings of Emīlija’s magazine Atpūta (Recreation), to her arrest and slow demise in a train en route to Siberia. The most prominent clairvoyant of the time - Eugene Fink’s prophecy that Emīlija would die from starvation in a foreign land (which served to be true) weaves through the narrative as a red thread. With this strong woman at the centre of the story, the film shows Latvian society in all its richness and gives the audience the opportunity to meet many well-known historical figures.

Lulu is a young woman working in real estate, but in her heart, she longs for a career that’s more suited to her idealistic character. By chance, she meets Gerda, who gives her the opportunity to do social work and really help people. But the job turns out to be more challenging than she thought. As she engages in the complicated work of saving the world, Lulu breaks up with her boyfriend and moves back in with her mother, who is herself trying to start over, and her cynical grandmother, who ruthlessly criticises the professional and romantic lives of both women.

Forty years ago, she went with her beloved to his home in Germany. Now she is back in her native land, but as a visitor. The paths to her childhood home, which no longer exists, are overgrown. The paths that lead to the hearts of loved ones are overgrown. Even her daughter's soul. She grew up without Velta's closeness. In 1949, the little girl, who was staying with Velta's sister, was taken with her family to Siberia. Broken lives, broken destinies.