The 8th Annual New York Baltic Film Festival (NYBFF) presented by Scandinavia House: The Nordic Center in America returns this November with the best new films from the Baltic region! On November 9, see the North American Premiere of the intimate documentary To Be Continued: Teenhood (Turpinājums: Pieaugšana, dir. Ivars Seleckis and Armands Začs, Latvia, 2024). *The screening will be followed by a talk with film director Armands Začs.*
The long-awaited sequel to the 2015 documentary To Be Continued, Latvian directors Ivars Seleckis and Armands Začs reunite with the five children featured in the original film—now 14 years old and on the cusp of adolescence. Zane, Kārlis, Anastasia, Gleb, and Anete—each from vastly different backgrounds across Latvia—find themselves at pivotal moments, navigating unique paths toward adulthood. Their everyday experiences reveal striking contrasts: while Zane’s only household duty is to tidy up her room, Anastasia is charged with stewarding the livestock and taking her little brother to kindergarten. While Kārlis’s mother checks his homework each evening and Gleb’s parents plan his daily routine, Anete spends an entire week alone in her family’s Riga apartment.
As the children grow up, the lives of the film’s protagonists increasingly reflect an intimate cross-section of Latvian society, highlighting ever-greater differences between city and countryside, between the wealthy and the less fortunate, and between the confident and the insecure. “A layered portrait of adolescence,” To Be Continued: Teenhood captures the world through the eyes of teenagers and observes how it also shapes their destinies. (96 min. In Latvian with English subtitles)
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
IVARS SELECKIS
Born in 1934 in Latvia, Ivars Seleckis
is a legendary Latvian documentary filmmaker, and
among the founders of style of the poetic documentary cinema of Riga. Educated as a food technologist, Seleckis began work at the Riga Film Studio in 1958 as a camera assistant, in the sixties he studied cinematography at the Moscow Film Institute, and in 1968 debuted as a documentary film director. His documentaries stand out for their thorough and sophisticated analysis of the social processes. A large number of films by Seleckis are very significant for Latvian film history: his film The Crossroad Street (1988) received EFA award for Best Documentary, as well as Joris Ivens and Robert Flaherty awards. In 2014 to mark his 80th birthday he received a Lifetime Contribution Award ‘Lielais Kristaps’ of National Film Festival Latvia. Since then he has made three more exceptional films. To Be Continued premiered at Visions du Reel 2018, THE LAND premiered at IDFA 2022. His latest film that premiered in Latvia on his 90th birthday is a co-work with director Armands Začs– To Be Continued. Teenhood with the international premiere at IDFA 2024.
ARMANDS ZAČS
Armands Začs is a Latvian director and editor. He has received two Latvian National Awards ‘Lielais Kristaps’ for best editing for the films January (2022) – feature fiction by Viesturs Kairišs that premiered at Tribeca IFF and was awarded Best International Narrative and My Father the Spy (2019) (dir. Gints Grūbe and Jaak Kilmi), screened at NYBFF 2019, that premiered internationally at Sheffield IFF. Armands has directed several short films and documentaries, including Mothers and Others which won the National Award for Best Documentary Director and FIPRESCI Award in 2019, and Best Short Film for Resistance is Futile in 2023. His feature fiction debut Youth Eternal is now in post-production. He was editor of THE LAND (dir. Ivars Seleckis) that premiered at IDFA 2022 and co-directed/edited To Be Continued. Teenhood.