On 19-20 October, RIGA IFF is organising a discussion series in cooperation with Kyiv Critics’ Week film festival on the topic of Colonialism in Film and Media at Kino Bize in Riga. 

Colonialism manifests in many different ways, and some forms that still prevail are being brought to light by the current geopolitical situation in Europe. Colonialist mindset patterns are recurrent in media coverage and are reflected in the film industry. This has raised some uncomfortable yet crucially important questions:

• What can be done to shed colonialist patterns in mass media and film? 
• Can cinema be perceived as a weapon of political and cultural diplomacy? Is it fair to think about culture and art as politics?
• What are the trends of subtle Western colonialism? And finally – do Eastern European films adjust the environments they portray to Western European perceptions?

FOCUS ON UKRAINE is a project of the Goethe-Institut incorporated into a comprehensive package of measures for which the Federal Foreign Office provides funding from the 2022 Supplementary Budget to mitigate the effects of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.