It is summer and a group of millennials is at a music festival, relishing their seemingly carefree lives, while their close friends, Ieva and Alex, are embarking on parenthood. Kitija is suffering from depression and fails to find support as the friends start to become more alienated from each other. Anna is trying to take care of her mental health by quitting weed, which turns out to be a challenge to her relationship with Kaspars, who grows it in their house. Unable to influence Martin's self-destructive lifestyle, Dainis starts to document it on video, becoming a participant and a creator of a reality show of his own. The friends start a wild journey into the new reality of becoming responsible for themselves and those around them.

The cast includes Kārlis Zahovskis, Emīls Ralfs, Sabīne Tīkmane, Antons Barons, Elza Gauja, Jana Herbsta and Rihards Sniegs.

“When I started working on the film, I did not yet know that my close friend, a prototype for one of the characters in the film, will commit suicide. He did this in a remote country house during the first wave of the pandemic. These tragic events have only strengthened my conviction that the themes of my upcoming film are now becoming more important than ever. Millennials seem to have a really difficult time becoming 'grownups', being unable to deal with the reality of everyday life. This manifests in various mental disorders and self-destructive attitudes that seem to pop out of nowhere. The film will explore my generation through a wild, often humorous, and drug-infused mosaic of extremely intimate character portrayals”, Armands Zacs told FNE.

The project is produced by Alise Ģelze through Latvian White Picture and financed by the National Film Centre of Latvia and European REACT-EU Funding as part of the Union’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The total budget is 701,000 EUR of which 20% is private investment, including the local VOD platform LMT, Armands Zacs also said.

Youth Eternal was shot by Estonian cinematographer Erik Pollumaa mostly in Riga and in the suburbs of Riga in the summer of 2023, and it has a Greek editor, Yorgos Zafeiris.

Production Information:

Producer:
White Picture (Latvia)
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Credits:
Director: Armands Zacs
Scriptwriter: Armands Zacs
DoP: Erik Pollumaa
Composer: Toms Auniņš
Editor: Yorgos Zafeiris
Cast: Kārlis Zahovskis, Emīls Ralfs, Sabīne Tīkmane, Antons Barons, Elza Gauja, Jana Herbsta, Rihards Sniegs