The Bog

Reinis Kalvins took part in LIM | Less is More workshop in 2022 for the development of this feature film.

Synposis

The body of a boy is discovered in the peat field, Broze, a local policeman is forced to reopen a missing persons case from 30 years ago and the past never truly stays buried.

Intentions

THE BOG is a story about the past that is all around and never dead. Story is set in a small town in Latvia where locals work in the peat extraction fields called deserts and spend their free time swimming in lakes and hunting game. As any small place, also this village holds many secrets – from the shortest track through the forest and the best mushroom places to actions and crimes of the youth. It is an environment that I spent all my childhood summers in and countless hours playing in the bog. Bog as a place that is not land, but also not water and a place that conserves whatever lands in it seems like a perfect metaphor to explore the themes of guilt, recurrence of events and the cyclical component of time. From time to time in Northern bogs a phenomenon of Bog Body is found – it is a body that has been mummified by the bog, and although a thousand years old it looks like it was buried yesterday. It is an on-going mystery: were these bodies victims of crime, accidents or ritual sacrifices?