A young family, consisting of the biologists Gatis and Mara and their two children, moves from Riga to a nature reserve. They are housed in an old country cottage by the wardens of the reserve. They start to repair and do up the cottage and feel more and more at home. Then its former occupant +anis suddenly turns up, back from Canada. When +anis realises that the present inhabitants have kept the spirit of the place alive and are unable to go and live anywhere else, he gives up all his rights to the cottage. The film then concentrates on +anis coming to terms with his memories of his time as a guerilla, when he found his first love, his ‘sister-in-arms’, who betrayed him fifty years ago. In addition, the film investigates the relationship between Gatis and his wife and nature, and the process in which Gatis and Mara learn the principles of adulthood. The title of the film, Ligzda, stands for the surroundings of living nature (the forest, the marshes, the coast), for the house and the farm, and more generally for the small fatherland that has to maintain its position between great powers such as Russia, Germany and America: countries that largely shape the fate of the characters.
