When their parents go in search of berries and honey, the little brown bears stay in the meadow with the sheep. They don’t want to go to bed yet, no matter how lovely the lullaby sounds. Romping through the landscape, they get entangled in a ball of yarn, only to fall asleep peacefully in the end … A “cuddly” animated film based on a Latvian lullaby.

A fly rotates around a lightbulb, a spoon turns in a cup. Everything moves in circles here, including the life of the couple. He looks at his mobile phone, she does the sun salutation. Even her somersaults don’t make him look up. The minimalist black and white animation begins to vibrate. The monotony gets out of rhythm. She imagines him as a fly and chases him. Scenes of a marriage, reflected in the yellow eyes of a gecko.

“Beware of everything, especially men”, Zelma was told as a rule of thumb for a successful life as a woman. But when you meet the greatest love of all, and it happens to Zelma several times, biochemistry takes over and all advice is forgotten. In an animated musical, Signe Baumane’s protagonist dances her way through promising romantic beginnings, disappointed hopes and failing marriages – only to find out that she had better make the rules herself.

How much does this Zelma have in common with her inventor? Did Signe Baumane, too, meet a Sergey once and was so overwhelmed by noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine that she simply failed to hear his condescending tone? In any case, the native Latvian and New Yorker by choice is known for using taboos and questionable notions of desirable and permitted, therefore “proper” femininity as a source of friction for her stories. For a long time, she remained faithful to the short form, until she presented her first feature-length animation in 2014 with “Rocks in My Pockets” – also at DOK Leipzig. She follows it up with “My Love Affair with Marriage” – not just in terms of length, but also in terms of the ironic, entertaining and yet serious exploration of the roles that biology and unexamined retold myths assign to women.

The Latvian director’s graduation film from Moscow Film School does not deliver images loyal to the regime but is a testimony to her journalistic background. When the independence struggle is to be suppressed by military power, the people in Riga erect barricades. Laila Pakalniņa captured the dramatic events whose topicality is frightening.

The Wall as a symbol. While the deadly border has already been overcome in Berlin, freedom must still be fought for in other states. A piece of the Wall was sent to Riga in 1990 – as a gesture of solidarity. A short cinematic essay in which people’s looks waver between hope and uncertainty.

Once upon a time there was a young Moroccan man who had a dream, a big dream. And he wanted it to come true, so he thought, somewhere beyond the great sea, perhaps in Estonia. Meanwhile, beyond the sea, perhaps in Estonia, a decadent wedding was being celebrated at the Villa Antropoff. The guests look like Mafia and money-laundering.