At this year’s festival, as part of the project PIONEERING WOMEN IN FILM, the Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF), in cooperation with the Embassy of Sweden in Latvia, the Swedish Institute and the Swedish Film Institute, will pay special attention to the works and significance of female directors in the history of film.

The PIONEERING WOMEN IN FILM programme includes three films in different styles and genres that showcase the directors’ unique styles and viewpoints.

The films will be accompanied by an exhibition in the courtyard of the Splendid Palace cinema at 61 Elizabetes iela, which will be on view for the duration of the festival. At the exhibition, you will be able to acquaint yourself with several outstanding personalities in cinema history, including Alice Guy-Blaché, a contemporary of the Lumière brothers and the first female filmmaker in the world.

The programme includes the following films:

On Saturday, 17 October, at 13:00, Mai Zetterling’s Loving Couples (1964) will screen at the Splendid Palace cinema and online simultaneously. Loving Couples is a story about three women in a maternity ward at the beginning of the 20th century. The film daringly touches on many topics that are still considered controversial today. It was nominated for the Palme d’Or in 1965 and sparked a small scandal at the Cannes Film Festival with scenes that were considered too provocative at the time.

On Monday, 19 October at 18:00 director Karin Swanström’s film Girl in Tails (1926) will screen at Splendid Palace and online simultaneously. The film is one of the best examples of Swedish silent cinema, and the last film that Swanström (1873–1942) directed. The director herself plays the widow of a venerable clergyman who acts as a spiteful moral arbiter in the local community, where young women behave “even more shamelessly than during the Renaissance”. The director continued her acting career and became the creative director and leading producer at Sweden’s largest film studio, Svensk Filmindustri, and thus the most influential woman in the nation’s film industry.

On Thursday, 22 October at 19:00 the futuristic film Aniara by directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja will screen in Ziedonis Hall at the National Library of Latvia and online simultaneously. In the film, people flee their self-made natural disasters on Earth by relocating to Mars, but end up going off course. Ultimately they even lose the support of the artificial intelligence device MIMA, which enables the travellers to watch their own memories of Earth in virtual reality.

Find out more about the festival’s programme, upcoming events and individual films on the RIGA IFF website: rigaiff.lv

All national security requirements will be ensured at every in-person screening.