The Film “The Red Barn” | Siguldas devons

The cultural centre “Siguldas devons” invites you to watch Pēteris Krilovs’s film “The Red Barn” about artist Raimonds Staprāns. Raimonds Staprāns, a Latvian who was nearly a hundred years old and lived across the ocean in California, had become a recognised painter, while in his homeland he is remembered as a playwright. In the film, characters created by the artist come to life. They enter the red barn—a painting by Staprāns that becomes a film set where the demise of an independent state is enacted. Director Pēteris Krilovs explores the relationship between the artist and power, blending the personal with the political, California’s colours with Latvia’s palette, and fiction film with documentary material.

In director Pēteris Krilovs’s vision, Latvia—whose name is grammatically feminine—is a woman with whom he has had a personal relationship throughout his life. On the Baltic Sea coast stands a small, red barn. It is a metaphor for Latvian émigré artist Raimonds Staprāns, known as a figurative expressionist. The barn takes on a real form, becoming a historical laboratory for events in Latvian and European history, as well as a point of reference for the life of a vivid, resilient and unconventional artist. San Francisco’s colours, Latvia’s palette, past and present, fiction film and documentary textures interweave.

Krilovs is a master of staged documentary cinema, whose landmark works include “Klucis. Nepareizais latvietis” (2008) and “Uz spēles Latvija” (2014). His interests have always included the idea of personal responsibility and people whose lives sharpen questions about their era. The subject of his latest documentary is Staprāns, who fled his homeland at the start of the Soviet occupation and went to the United States, where he became a recognised artist and wrote plays about Latvian history. Krilovs and Staprāns share an interest in historical figures, and so the characters in the film—portrayed by actors Imants Strads, Kaspars Zvīgulis and others—come to life and question their author. The film reveals Staprāns not only as a thinker and painter, but also as a playwright: a man with a keen, philosophical interest in Latvia, living across the ocean.

The film “The Red Barn” is the culmination of events marking Raimonds Staprāns’s centenary. The threads of the artist’s work, personality and life are explored in Ieva Struka’s recently published book “46 epizodes ar un bez ironijas”, and the exhibition “Raimonds Staprāns. Klusuma arhitektūra” is on view at the Latvian National Museum of Art until 17 January next year.

Director: Pēteris Krilovs | 73 min | 2026 | VFS Films