Modris

Seventeen-year-old Modris lives in a gray microdistrict. Despite having a pretty girlfriend he's apathetic, generally unenthusiastic about school and always at loggerheads with his single, weary mother. Time and again he steals minor sums of money in order to feed his gambling addiction. When, in the middle of winter, he cashes in on his mother's radiator with a Russian pawnbroker, it proves the final straw: She presses charges against him for theft. Modris is given a two-year suspended sentence, in part due to his blundering and apathetic behaviour in court. From then on he has probation conditions to stick to, one of which is a ban on the accrual of further debts: The alternative, should be commit three further minor offences, is prison. The youngster refuses to change however, as he continues to quarrel with his mother and neglect his girlfriend. In fact it's only his absent father who seems to awaken his curiosity.

Having produced several documentary films, Latvian filmmaker Juris Kursietis' début feature film tells the tale of a young man who, though he might have almost reached the age of majority, is far from grown-up. He also speaks of an east European EU member state whose legal system has stagnated somewhere between American zero-tolerance and a Soviet-style disregard for human rights, criminalising youths whose lives are hampered by a lack of ambition and maturity.