The film follows an artist, a zoologist, a nature scholar, and a sheep farmer working in the IT sector, who all view the demise of biological bodies differently. Forest carrion, larvae under tombstones, sheep in the barn, layers of feathers and bones, and shimmering green flies on decaying flesh – amidst all this is a human trying to understand their place in cosmology. In this grand tapestry of transformation, what is the human species: part of a cycle or more akin to superhuman?

“You exist for one moment; you do something, you struggle just like any animal. However, only you, of all animals, know that you will pass away as a mortal being. The others are scared, but their fear is instinctive. They don’t know. They don’t understand that they will die. Humans understand,” says Ilmārs Tīrmanis, one of the protagonists in the film.

Māris Maskalāns started working on the script in 2014, and the first stage of filming began the same year, but after a year the shooting was put to a halt. The script was reworked several times together with Pauls Bankovskis and Ilmārs Tīrmanis, and the work on the film only resumed in 2020.

Uldis Cekulis produced the film through Latvian VFS Films with a total budget rising slightly above 95,000 EUR. The project was partly supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, but the main contributors were the VFS Films (technical equipment and postproduction), and Māris Maskalāns himself, who was also the cinematographer of the film.

Māris Maskalāns made his debut in documentary in 2001 with Roof of the Moonway / Jumta likums, in which, as well as in every film that followed, he intertwined cinema and biology, environment and man as a part of nature. He also lensed Laila Pakalniņa’s documentary Dream Land / Leiputrija, which was made on his own idea. This observational essay on wildlife and life cycles in a massive dumping of city garbage was nominated for the European Film Academy Awards in 2005.

Production Information:

Producer:
VFS Films (Latvia)
Uldis Cekulis: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Credits:
Director: Māris Maskalāns
Scriptwriters: Māris Maskalāns, Pauls Bankovskis, Ilmārs Tīrmanis
Cinematographer: Māris Maskalāns
Editor: Gatis Belogrudovs
Original score: +K+M+B
Sound director: Edvards Broders
Participants: Kristians Brekte, Edgars Dreijers, Anna and Arnis Ginters, Ilmārs Tīrmanis