M FARM A documentary thriller Life proceeds calmly in a quiet Latvian village. It’s almost like a fairy tale – friendly neighbours, a safe environment for children, and an active public life. And yet here a blood-curdling and terrible crime comes to light. A milkmaid who works for a local farm and her boss, who is called Tadeušs, involved the woman’s juvenile granddaughter, Laura, in their sexual games. The director of this film learned about this horrifying story while she was producing a routine documentary story about one of the rural crisis centres for children. The question: Why was Laura raised by her violent grandmother and her employer? Where is Laura’s real mother? That was the driving force behind the film. The local custody court refused to offer any information about the mother, who is called Vineta, but it did offer hints to say that the woman was suffering from mental disturbances and was in a psychiatric clinic. It turned out that this was not true. After she had her first child, the woman really did suffer from postpartum depression, and she did spent a few months at the psychiatric hospital. Her psychiatrist, however, claims that the postpartum depression was a short-term phenomenon. Vineta is absolutely capable of raising her children successfully, including a second daughter who was born later. So why is it that the village’s custody court has taken a unilateral decision vis-a-vis the fate of Vineta’s first daughter, Laura? And why has it so completely ignored the child’s mother? Why did the court decide to turn Vineta’s daughter over to the drunken and perverse Dangira?