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Exclusive: The makers of Latvian breakout drama Soviet Jeans are ironing out the creases on a second season.

We understand that producer Tasse Film is moving ahead on a new season of the Series Mania favorite that will move the action on nearly a decade from the original 1979 setting, which was 12 years before Latvia was freed from communist rule.

Plot details are scarce, but we hear two episodes will unfold in Germany on either side of the Berlin Wall right before its collapse in 1989. The love story between lead character Renars (Karlis Arnolds Avots) and Tina (Aamu Milonoff) will once again trigger the plot and form its backbone.

Stanislavs Tokalovs and Teodora Markova are returning as writers and showrunners, and development is well underway. Baltic streamer Go3 is once again on board and funding from international partners is being sought, with the creative team looking to supersize Season 2 as an international co-production.

Beta Film has picked up international distribution rights to Latvia’s “Soviet Jeans.” Presented at Berlinale Series Market Selects, the show will premiere at Series Mania in March.

Set in Riga in the late 1970s and based on multiple true stories, it zooms in onto young rock fan Renars (Karlis Arnolds Avots), sent to a mental asylum for political reasons. Undeterred, he starts illegal production of counterfeit U.S. jeans with his inmates, flooding the black market.

“We wanted to make it international,” said Teodora Markova who showruns alongside Stanislavs Tokalovs. They wrote the script with Waldemar Kalinowski.

“We also decided to go for a completely different tone when depicting this period, which so often is shown in this harsh, gloomy way. People used to joke during communism too: Humor was their main survival mechanism. They still lived and loved and laughed. Most of them had to learn how to trick the system,...

The wild and primal qualities of nature are to the fore in Latvian director Ugis Olte debut fiction feature, which playfully uses techniques and ideas from folk horror to reinforce its unsettling mood, while keeping the emphasis on the mythic rather than the manic. There's more than just the suggestion of threat indicated by the axe head that is slowly being consumed by a tree in this mossy, moist corner of Latvia - as we immediately see a kayaker getting into tragic trouble on a river in spate. Beyond the immediate threat to life, there's also the flicker of something else in the water - something whose mystery Olte carefully guards throughout the film.

The incident leaves kayak instructor and guide Andrejs (Igors Selegovskis) acutely aware of the dangers nature can hold, all of which means he's keen to help his social media influencer sister Mara (Elvita Ragovska) and her crew.

Andrejs (Igors Selegovskis). Ugis Olte: 'They say that Christianity was brought here 800 years ago by Germans, but I feel that they haven't succeeded yet because we have a lot of this pagan mindset' Latvian director Ugis Olte makes the shift from documentary to mythical-inflicted fiction with his latest film Upurga - which has its world premiere today at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Andrejs (Igors Selegovskis) has experienced the danger of the forests at first hand due to a tragic accident and is now a stickler for health and safety. He gets more than he bargains for when he heads out into the woods with a social influencer and a film crew to shoot a vegan sausage advert. The woods hold secrets that tap into both primal urges and fears as well as an eclectic mix of locals including a mute cabbage fermenter and his wife (Ugis Praulins and...