BEING UNWANTED

Aloizs Brenčs is one of (Soviet-era) Latvian film culture’s best-kept secrets: a master of genre, whose work was dedicated almost exclusively to exploring the crime film in all of its facets. As a result, Brenčs managed to create a chronicle of the republic that reaches from the leaden haze of the Brezhnev era to the first days of independence and transition to capitalism. TO BE UNWANTED is considered his masterpiece in his homeland. The plot is pleasantly straight forward: A guy gets out of prison after years inside, wants to take a crack at living an honest life, is forced to admit to himself how difficult it really is, gets pressured by his old partners in crime, who need him again for some shady business... You know the drill. But what many adore most about TO BE UNWANTED are its images of a filthy, run-down Riga, with which the film documents a particular sense of place just as much as it captures the climate of a specific era.