Everything Will Be Alright is an intense character-driven documentary that allows us to identify with the protagonists and see our peers in them, at the same time leaving room for doubt, disagreement, and open-ended questions. Ninety-year-old Nina is a symbol for family – for her, Soviet nostalgia is ever-present, and 9 May is a pilgrimage of dignity. Nina’s daughter Irina is torn between raising an adult daughter, her husband Raul’s controlling tirades, and doing her mother’s bidding. Wiping away her tears, Irina just wants the best for everyone. The TV, which is always switched on, looms in the background like a sacred icon, and leader Putin frequently pops onto the screen.

Director Stanislav Tokalov takes the viewer into the everyday life of his relatives, the Russian-speaking community in Purvciems, a suburb of Riga. Together with cinematographer and co-writer Valdis Celmiņš, the director has created an honest documentary close-up – spanning four years it is, in a sense, the “perfect historical melodrama”. The film is about his family, Latvia’s ethnic divisions, and the Russian-speaking community’s sense of belonging over the past 30 years. Without promising that “everything will be alright”, the film unravels nationally important questions about integration, collective memory, propaganda, and the war of identities. It is about everything that constructs our consciousness and choices.