Handful of Bullets

Colour, 35 mm
Latvia, Sweden, 2002, 87 min
Section: East of the West

Synopsis

The arrival of young prostitute Liene affects the peaceful coexistence of Ivars and his uncle Fredis. Seventeen-year-old Ivars travelled to Riga from the poverty-stricken countryside to make money to keep his family. Together with Fredis, he occupies the premises of a former munitions plant, where his uncle had worked during the previous regime and where he retreated after losing his job and breaking up with his wife. Without knowing how Liene makes her money, both men start competing for her favours, and when Ivars discovers that Liene is sleeping with Fredis, he grabs an old rifle and a handful of bullets, intending to settle accounts with his uncle…. Una Celma: "My film treats current and universal themes. In the first case, the societies which arose after the fall of the Soviet Union ten years ago - where are they now, how do people live there? How much did it cost Latvia to imitate the West?  The universal themes are love, betrayal, (lost) youth, family values and the clash of idealism and raw materialism".

About the director

Una Celma (b. 1960, Riga) studied at Latvian University and Moscow´s VGIK film school (dept. of film and television direction). She then worked successively for a film studio in Riga, Swedish television, the BBC World Service, the private Latvian TV station NTV-5 and another private film studio. She directed three features in the late 1980s-early 1990s: Outside (1989), Crossroads (1990) and Island (1991); in 1994 she received support from the Swedish Film Institute for her documentary The Girls of 1960, which was followed by two films made in a Latvian-Swedish coproduction. In 1999 she directed the romantic comedy Follow Me, and in 2000 the award-winning short documentary Egg Lady.