Le Temps des amoureuses

Irbene, in a hidden corner of Latvia, is one of the closed towns from the Soviet era. Equipped with a gigantic spy radio telescope, emblem of an obsolete power, this place now divides its energies between rare tourism and radio astronomy of the sun, whose uncertain goal gives its title to the film. To observe the changes in this society in this forgotten part of Europe, to capture the most discreet tensions, is the goal here. Apart from the handful of astronomers, who are like big kids stranded in the middle of a toyshop, Catherine Dalfin is above all attached to the women who live in this town, which is more overlooked than deserted. Ghosts or characters from a dodgy modern fairy tale, they haunt the surrounding woods. Their slow-paced life is tempered by the bare necessities imposed by their subsistence economy: fishing, hunting, gathering. Forsaken, these women embody the rift between an obsolete world and the onset of a market economy which is as far away as the sun.