Jānis Ābele
Filmmaker Jānis Ābele won the Grand Prix at the 33rd International Short Film Festival Tous Courts in France with his graduation film Six Feet Above (2015). This work laid the foundation for his debut feature, 7 Billion Years Before the End of the World, released in 2018. A year later, he completed his second feature film, Jelgava ’94. The film performed well at the Latvian box office and received four national film awards, including Best Director for Ābele at the age of 29. Jelgava ’94 also became the first Latvian fiction feature to be available on Netflix. In 2022, the director released 81 Meters, a short documentary that screened at numerous festivals and received the national award for Best Short Documentary. He earned another national award for his short fiction film Call of the Void (2024). In autumn 2025, he premiered his first feature-length documentary, The Last Will, at Riga IFF and in the Tallinn Black Nights competition programs.
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81 meters
Duration: 28 minutes
Subscription access
Spring 2021. A cinephile invites you on an intimate journey through the last surviving cinema houses in Latvia. This documentary essay, shot on Super 8, opens the locked doors of these theaters during what may be the most difficult period in the history of physical cinema spaces. They are closed to the public, but at times we can feel that they are still alive.
81 meters
Duration: 28 minutes
Subscription access
Spring 2021. A cinephile invites you on an intimate journey through the last surviving cinema houses in Latvia. This documentary essay, shot on Super 8, opens the locked doors of these theaters during what may be the most difficult period in the history of physical cinema spaces. They are closed to the public, but at times we can feel that they are still alive.
