Movies: Jānis Ābele

Film takes us deep inside the world of Latvian teenagers in 90s: combining the intimate diary of a teenager Jānis trying to find himself by joining a subculture, as well as a skillful, detailed and almost documentary-like depiction of the beginnings ...

Two twenty-somethings from Latvia meet in the south of France. Leo studies restoration, Anna has lived in Marseille for some time and works as a hairdresser. Also, she looks very much like the image of a girl that Leo has uncovered restoring an altar...

The young Jekabs, Linda and Rihards enjoy the spring full of romance and bohemian way of life. The apple-trees are in blossom in Riga and the war unavoidably approaches....

A problem that every film director has faced – how do you film something that does not exist? A director is making a documentary about an actor and his stalker – but the stalker never appears. As the deadline approaches, unusual steps must be taken....

A documentary essay examining the creative process of creating a book from the writer's first thought to the printing of the typescript....

The heroine is a widow and a fiancé who wants to begin a new and happy life. Conflicts in her family’s past prevent it, but she does not give up – she wants to clear away the ruins and do what she can. “Enough of looking for guilt, it’s time to find ...

A melancholic view facing a mirror of water. It deceives the film’s protagonist, who wallows in longing and memories of his lost lover. The water here takes on the shape of a tear, a trickle through fallen leaves, the volume of a drink left undrunk i...

Spring 2021. A cinephile invites you on an intimate trip through the last surviving cinema houses in Latvia. This documentary essay, shot on super 8mm, opens the locked doors to picture houses during a Covid-19 lockdown, perhaps the most difficult ti...

An ordinary old folks’ home on the Latvian border – one of many, where our parents, grand-parents and other relatives spend their old age. Theirs is the generation whose prime years co-existed with the Soviet Union, and who were promised: work, give ...