Unique stories, vivid emotions, and highlights of contemporary cinema – tickets for all Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF) screenings are now on sale, inviting audiences to embark on countless cinematic adventures beyond the familiar every day from 15 to 25 October. Tickets for the 13th edition of RIGA IFF in Riga, Sigulda, Daugavpils and Cēsis are available on the festival website, rigaiff.lv, at Biļešu Serviss box offices and on the websites of festival venues.

To find the right film for you among the nearly 100 works in the RIGA IFF programme, the festival team encourages audiences to explore the calendar and festival guide at rigaiff.lv, heart their favourites and plan their festival visits while tickets are still available.

Festival Director Liene Treimane invites audiences to discover the films offered by RIGA IFF that can change the way we see the world:

The festival programme is a map created by our team, where alongside films already being talked about throughout the world, we make significant room for unexpected discoveries. As a trusted guide beyond the familiar, RIGA IFF encourages audiences to take unexpected routes through the vast landscape of contemporary cinema.

Over eleven days of RIGA IFF, Riga becomes a place where today’s cinema meets its voices of tomorrow, and where audiences can decide for themselves how far they are ready to venture into the unknown.

For 11 days and nights, RIGA IFF will present ambitious big-screen debuts and the latest auteur cinema from around the world, as well as some of the most talked-about mainstream films of the moment. Among them are the latest works by acclaimed directors such as Quentin Dupieux, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Jordan Firstman, Marie Kreutzer, Martin McDonagh, Cristian Mungiu, Paweł Pawlikowski, May el-Toukhy and Thomas Stuber. A dazzling constellation of Hollywood stars will grace cinema screens in Riga, Cēsis, Sigulda and Daugavpils – Gillian Anderson (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma), Juliette Binoche (Queen at Sea), Anders Danielsen Lie (Everybody Digs Bill Evans; Low Expectations; Brave New Love), Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan (Fjord), Léa Seydoux (The Gentle Monster; The Unknown), Sandra Hüller (Rose; Fatherland), Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart (Full Phil), John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell (Wild Horse Nine), joined by many other brilliant screen icons. The RIGA IFF programme also includes films awarded at some of Europe’s and the world’s most prestigious film festivals, along with several titles submitted by their countries for consideration in the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film category.

The 13th edition of RIGA IFF will feature highlights from Nordic cinema, prominent voices of German-speaking filmmakers and the finest of European children’s and family films, as well as celebrate the premieres of several Latvian films and co-productions. Turning to the allure of Euro-thrillers, works by masters of crime drama Claude Chabrol, Michael Haneke and Nicolas Winding Refn will bring the dangers of Nordic noir, French cinematic tension, collective paranoia and serpentine plots to the big screen. Meanwhile, the RIGA IFF competition programmes will showcase the latest cinema from the Baltic Sea region, invite audiences to journey through the distinctive worlds of Baltic music videos and experience a curated feast of international and Latvian short films.

The hidden gems of the RIGA IFF programme – films that have not yet reached wider public attention – will surprise audiences with bold cinematic forms and discoveries that can only be experienced at the festival. Among the festival films are heartfelt and unconventional portraits of love, voices of powerful personalities and nuanced coming-of-age stories, as well as psychological dramas and thrillers that explore society on the razor’s edge and peer into the darkest corners of the human mind. Many of these films will have their first – and often only – screenings in Latvian cinemas at RIGA IFF.

Tickets for all RIGA IFF programme screenings are now available on the festival website, rigaiff.lv, at Biļešu Serviss box offices, as well as on the websites and at the box offices of festival venues.

Follow the latest festival news at rigaiff.lv and on RIGA IFF’s social media channels, or subscribe to the RIGA IFF newsletter. RIGA IFF is made possible with support from the State Culture Capital Foundation, the EU programme “Creative Europe – MEDIA”, Riga City Council, the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, and the National Film Centre of Latvia.