Building on the success of The Foundation of Criminal Excellence, which was listed as the fourth-most-viewed film in Latvian cinemas in 2018, the same creative team continues to scout actors from the masses and recount narratives from the criminal world through the lens of wicked humour.

Written by director Oskars Rupenheits himself, the storyline of Red Code Blue, his sophomore feature, tracks the journey of a young police detective called Romāns Skulte (Raitis Stūrmanis), who joins the Riga Central Precinct in the mid-1990s. In no time at all, Skulte’s youthful enthusiasm clashes with the harsh reality of the streets, leading him to the realisation that in order to purge the city of crime, ethical and legal boundaries must be breached. Riddled with crime and street racketeering, said decade was a particularly remarkable and unstable period in the newly independent country’s history.

In a conversation with Cineuropa, Rupenheits shared the fact that the research process took years. He interviewed not just rookie policemen, but also those with substantial experience. “Those who worked throughout the 1990s shared some crazy stories. Yet the testimonies about such things as police equipment and safety matters differed widely. Thus, the reconstruction of the historical reality was simultaneously liberating and constraining.” Curiously, some of the core cast members have professional experience in law enforcement.

The film is sure to be crammed with mischievous characters – be it the morally questionable police supervisor Antons (Indulis Miglavs), the scary chief of the criminal division Oļegs (Armands Guļāns) or the director of the criminal department Vladimirs (Valters Kalējs), who claims that everything that debutant Skulte learned in the police academy must be unlearned.

Rupenheits recalls that the casting process was intense, as the team received thousands of applications. Many ranged from unconventional to downright comical. Some applicants already embraced the cop or bandit dress code, while others sent in photos of their garden flowers and other mundane details. “I’m looking for an actor that naturally echoes the character. Just like with forming a bouquet, the hardest part is to choose the first flower – the first cast member. Progressively, it takes shape as an organic composition.”

Particular effort is being put into creating natural-sounding dialogues. “It was pivotal that the characters would talk like they would in real life – not necessarily using grammatically correct language. To achieve this, I play with words, breaking the syntax,” the director says. In Latvian, the officers’ lexicon is richly layered with jargon, calques and Russian swear words. “The dominant language in the precincts at the time was Russian, yet I wanted the film to be in Latvian. But yes, there will be a lot of juicy swear words.”

Lastly, Rupenheits emphasises the fact that the film is truly a result of teamwork, and he tries to maintain a horizontal hierarchy on set. The cinematography has been entrusted to Juris Pīlēns, the production design to Toms Jansons and the costumes to Ance Beinaroviča. With some filming days still lying ahead (in total, the shoot will last 75 days), Red Code Blue (or Tumšzilais Evaņģēlijs in Latvian) is soon to enter the post-production stage, with a release slated for the first trimester of 2025. The funding has been sourced from crowdfunding, the film studio’s capital, private sponsorship and the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia.

Red Code Blue is being produced by Sintija Andersone, Oskars Rupenheits and Juris Pīlēns (with Sergejs Timoņins and Roberts Vinovskis also lending a hand) for Latvia’s KEF Studio.