The 9th Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF) begins today, on 13 October, with the national premiere of Signe Baumane’s film My Love Affair with Marriage (Mans laulību projekts). For 11 days, more than 100 films from all over the world will be screened in Riga and online throughout Latvia. There is a special focus on developments in the cinema landscape of the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries. This year, the festival also continues its efforts to open up the experience of cinema to a wider audience by improving accessibility.

The festival has curated international premieres and glimpses into cinema history under a slogan taken from a poem by legendary director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini: “The sweet chaos of daily good and evil”. The festival’s screening schedule and the festival’s digital catalogue will help you orient yourself in the wide range of events on offer. They can be found at the main festival venues Splendid Palace, Citadele, and K Suns, as well as online at rigaiff.lv/en

This year, the festival will also use the National Library of Latvia as a venue. A double feature from the festival’s ARCHITECT’S CUT section will screen here on 16 October. On 19 and 20 October, two discussions from the festival’s FOCUS ON UKRAINE section – How To Decolonise the Media: Critical Cultural Journalism in Eastern Europe, and Westernisation and Eastern European Cinema – will be held at the cinema Kino Bize. At KSuns, the audience will have the opportunity to watch the festival’s international short film competition.

This year, films in six competition sections are competing for awards at the festival. Overall, the festival lineup is structured into 12 sections that include family films in the KIDS’ REEL section and highlights from the best international festivals in the FESTIVAL SELECTION. To enjoy the best new Nordic cinema, we recommend the NORDIC HIGHLIGHTS section, and the films in ZEITGEIST DEUTSCHLAND attempt to capture the spirit of contemporary German cinema.

“RIGA IFF invites viewers to observe, analyse, and engage in conversation, whether it be about age-old or very current themes that have been captured in classic and contemporary cinema; and develop new ideas for cultural and social development that might not yet have been interpreted through film,” says RIGA IFF Director Liene Treimane.

RIGA IFF receives support from the State Culture Capital Foundation, the Riga City Council, the National Film Centre, and Creative Europe MEDIA.