Vai viegli but jaunam?
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Vai viegli būt jaunam? ('Is It Easy to Be Young?') is a Latvian documentary movie directed by Juris Podnieks. It was filmed in 1986 and is considered to be among the most controversial movies of the time. It was one of the five winners of the 1987 International Documentary Association awards.
The movie speaks about the lives of young people who have perished because of the Soviet regime and the society on the whole - their conflicts with parents and the society, the vanity of their teachers and the authorities, the fear that there is no meaning to their lives. This is a movie about young people; the director is a young man filming his peers - high-schoolers looking for their places in life, a young mother worried about the future of her daughter after the Chernobyl catastrophe, a young man believing in Krishna (being religious was generally discouraged by the Soviet government, not to mention any 'unusual' religions), young adults returning from having been forced to fight in the war in Afghanistan and having become ones of 'the lost generation'.
The movie had a major impact in the Soviet Union. It was seen by at least 28 million people during the first year. 85 countries bought the rights to show the movie. For Latvia, it was an incredible number.