Escaping Riga

The film is looking for answers to the question how the 20th century impacted and changed lives and how dreams turn into disappointment and crash of illusions. The protagonists of the film are philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin and film director Sergei Eisenstein. Switching between their lives, it tells about time when Europe changed forever. Biographical material and films visuals, approximated to historic cinematographic tradition, lets the viewer follow the protagonists' evolvement and find out why, after a meeting in 1945, Berlin rejected his previous life, withdrawing to an aristocratic "golden cage" and Eisenstein ended his life a broken man, having lost all faith in his views and regime.

"A narrator guides the viewer through this entirely black-and-white film, which apart from archive footage such as Wolf Hunting in Russia made by the Pathé brothers in 1910 leans heavily on reenacted scenes from the subjects' lives, such as the tennis match between Eisenstein and Charlie Chaplin on a visit to Hollywood in 1930. These scenes deploy styles from the silent age, including the typical film music of the time, title cards and a melodramatic acting style, as well as special effects and double projections." – IDFA

Latvia / Russia / UK 2014