Film "The Red Barn"

At the cultural center "Siguldas devons" in December, we invite you to watch Pēteris Krilovs' film "The Red Barn" about the artist Raimonds Staprāns.

Raimonds Staprāns - the nearly hundred-year-old Latvian on the other side of the ocean, in California, had become a celebrated painter, but in his homeland he is remembered as a playwright.

In the film, the characters created by the author come to life. They end up in a red barn - Staprāns' painting, which turns into a film set where the downfall of an independent state is played out. Director Pēteris Krilovs explores the relationship between the artist and power, blending the personal with the political, California color with the Latvian palette, feature film with documentary material. In the vision of the film's director Pēteris Krilovs, Latvia, through the feminine gender of the country's name, is a woman with whom he has been engaged in a lifelong personal relationship.

On the shore of the Baltic Sea stands a small red barn. It is a metaphor for the Latvian émigré artist Raimonds Staprāns, known as a figurative expressionist. The barn has taken on real contours - it becomes a historical laboratory not only for the events of Latvian and European history, but also a point of reference for the life path of a vivid, stubborn, and untamed artist. Alongside it flow the color of San Francisco, the Latvian palette, the past, the present, feature film, and documentary textures.

Krilovs is a master of staged documentary cinema, having created such canonical works as "Klučis. The Wrong Latvian" (2008) and "Latvia on the Line" (2014). The author's field of interest has always included the concept of personal responsibility and people whose life stories sharpen the questions of their era. The subject of the latest documentary film is Staprāns, who fled his homeland at the start of the Soviet occupation and went to the United States, became a celebrated artist, and wrote plays about Latvian history. Both Krilovs and Staprāns share an interest in historical personalities, and it is only natural that in the film these characters - portrayed by actors Imants Strads, Kaspars Zvīgulis, and others - come to life and ask questions of their author. The film reveals Staprāns not only as a thinker and painter, but also as a playwright - one with a keen and philosophical interest in Latvia while living on the other side of the ocean.

The film "The Red Barn" is the culmination of the centenary events dedicated to Raimonds Staprāns. The artist's creative work, personality, and life are explored in the recently published book by Ieva Struka, "46 Episodes With and Without Irony," and the exhibition "Raimonds Staprāns. Architecture of Silence" is on view at the Latvian National Museum of Art until January 17 next year.

Director - Pēteris Krilovs | 73 min | 2026 | VFS Films