Everything Will Be Alright (DVD)

Everything Will Be Alright, director Stanislav Tokalov's non-fiction debut, is an intense, character-driven documentary filmed across four years and taking the viewer into the everyday life of his immediate family and the Russian-speaking community in Purvciems, a suburb outside of Riga. There's Nina, his grandmother, a World War II veteran who arrived in Latvia in 1955 in pursuit of a better life, his mother, a former university lecturer, and his 18 year-old sister, a talented artist who's starting her adult life by discovering love and trying to break away from her family. Together with cinematographer and co-writer, Valdis Celmiņš, Tokalov has created an intimate film about family, Latvia's ethnic divisions, and the Russian-speaking community's sense of belonging in a country that's not their own. Without promising that "everything will be alright," the film unravels vital questions about integration, collective memory, propaganda, and the war of identities that affects many -- both in Latvia, and around the world.