Watch 8 award winning and classic Latvian films online for free until February 8

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Film
film, Pēteris Krilovs, The Grand Kristaps
Watch 8 award winning and classic Latvian films online for free until February 8
From February 1 to 4, you can watch a selection of “Lielais Kristaps” films for free worldwide on Film .lv! “Lielais Kristaps” or “The Grand Kristaps” is Latvia’s version of the Oscars. It includes the best films of the past year and a special selection of films by director Pēteris Krilovs.
To provide a broader overview of Latvian cinema, during theThe Grand Kristaps films.lv, in collaboration with the Latvian Filmmakers’ Union, provides an opportunity to revisit the best films of the previous year, and this year, too, we present works that won awards in their categories. Postcard from Rome (director Elza Gauja), best feature film Resistance is Futile (director Armands Začs), best feature-length documentary Everything will be fine (director Stanislav Tokalov, who is on this year’s International Jury of the Grand Kristaps ), Best Short Documentary Full Moon Serenade (from the LTV series Latvian Code, directed by Mārcis Ābele and Lauris Ābele), best animated film Law of the Heart (director Roze Stiebra).

This year, the National Film Award for Lifetime Achievement goes to Pēteris Krilovs – a film and theatre director, also an outstanding teacher and mentor of young filmmaking talents, a creative leader and an important personality in Latvian culture – and three films have been selected for the programme of the Grand Kristaps on his own recommendation. Two of them are short feature films, both based on classics of Latvian literature, and both featuring brilliant acting. The film How We Left Home (1986) is based on the memoirs of Jānis Jaunsudrabiņš, collected in the book I Tell My Wife ( 1946), and reveals a very brief but emotionally powerful episode in the writer’s life. In the autumn of 1944, as the Second World War front approached Latvia, the writer and his wife left their native home and went into exile, piling all their belongings in a small cart, which they also had to pull themselves, as there was no horse. The main roles – Valdemārs Zandbergs and Helga Dancberga, with Pēteris Liepiņš in a brilliant character role. The second short film Maestro (1990) is based on the humorous story by Anšlavs Eglītis, where the legendary Eduards Pavuls is vividly portrayed as a temperamental and capricious genius painter.

Pēteris Krilovs’ work is complemented by Latvia at Stake (2014), which received five Grand Kristaps nominations and the award for the best feature-length documentary of the year. The director’s personal motives and autobiographical elements are woven into the unravelling of this spy story and the secret operations of the post-war years, while the use of plasticine animation is artistically notable, unexpectedly complementing archival footage and contemporary testimonies.