Pelican in the Desert

Latgale is a land on the very eastern edge of the European Union, the part of Eastern Latvia. Not so long ago, this part of the Baltic region was quite different. The number of Jews in the towns sometimes reached as much as 90 percent. Old Believers, having escaped persecution in Russia, established their colonies – strings of villages – there. Nowadays, Latgallians are embarrassed by their dialect, poverty and provincialism. This land is vanishing. What is vanishing is its special way of existing that for centuries has been making this region remote and magical. At times Latgale seems like a land in the middle of a body of water. At other times, it seems a desert with the ark of rescued humanity all covered by sand. The film presents a land that is made by people, spiritual and physical extremes of living and thoroughly Christian resurrection.