Download PDF - Unitel

Sofia plunges deeper and deeper into Marga's past in order to uncover this secret. It will take her far
back into the 1930s, to a young and exuberant Marga, her husband Juris, his friend Osvalds and to a
woman named Iewa (Juta Vanaga / Dace Eversa) whom Sofia had never heard about. It will take her
back to wonderful times, to dramatic events, to a great love and to an even greater suffering.
The more Sofia learns about her mother, the clearer her own identity becomes. And so it emerges
that what Marga had told her about her life and about their past together was carved out of thin
air…
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The "Hitler-Stalin Pact" was signed on 23 August 1939. On the basis of this secret agreement, Latvia
fell to the Soviet Union. On 17 June 1940 the Red Army occupied the Latvian territory, which was
then incorporated into the Soviet Union against the will of the Latvian people.
In June 1941 the German Wehrmacht marched into Latvia. Three years later there were major
battles between the German and Soviet armies on Latvian territory, from which the USSR emerged
victorious. During this war, Latvians were called up for military service by both occupation forces,
and even forced to fight against one another.
The following post-war years were marked by particularly cruel reprisals against the Latvian
population. Nearly 120,000 Latvians were arrested and sent to Soviet concentration camps
(GULAGs). 130,000 fled to the West from the Soviet occupation forces. On 25 March 1949, in a
large-scale operation, nearly 43,000 people – mostly from rural areas – were transported from Latvia
to Siberia.
In the second half of the 1980s, the Latvians used the nascent liberalization of the Soviet Union to
establish various political organizations such as, for example, the People's Front, the National
Independent Movement and the Citizen's Congress. These organizations supported the restoration
of Latvia's independence.
On 23 August 1989 the three people's fronts built a live human chain of over several hundred
kilometers from Tallinn via Riga to Vilnius (the Baltic Path) in order to draw attention to the crime of
the Hitler-Stalin Pact that had been in effect for 50 years already. During the protest marches and
demonstrations, the people sang forbidden songs, defiant rock versions of popular Latvian songs that
became summer hits. The concept of the "Singing Revolution" was coined.
A major step in the restoration of Latvia's independence was taken on 4 May 1990. On that day, the
Supreme Council of the Latvian SSR passed a declaration in which the will to restore independence
was expressed, and a period of transition to complete freedom laid down officially.
Moscow was opposed to the Balts' strivings for independence, since they could bring down the
entire Soviet Union. The revolution took its course in the night of 13 January 1991 with the bloody
events in Vilnius, where the Soviet military occupied the Lithuanian Television. Thirteen peaceful
demonstrators were killed. The population of Riga then erected barricades around its radio building
and the Parliament in the old town of Riga to protect them from Soviet attacks. For entire days and
nights, the people kept up their opposition and sang their freedom songs around bonfires in the icy
cold. When the "old guard" revolted against Gorbatchev in Moscow in August 1991, barricades were
For further information:
Beta Cinema Press, Dorothee Stoewahse, Tel: + 49 89 67 34 69 15, Mobile: + 49 170 63 84 627
press@betafilm.com, www.betacinema.com.
Pictures and filmclips available on ftp.betafilm.com, username: ftppress01, password: 8uV7xG3tB
6