The eighth Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF), which will take place 14-24 October, is announcing its feature film lineup and the jury for its main competition, the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition. The films in this section will be screened both in person at the Splendid Palace cinema and online throughout Latvia. The winner of the festival’s main award and the 3,000 EUR prize money given by the BALTA insurance company, will be chosen by an international jury of film professionals. All films in competition will have their Latvian premieres at RIGA IFF.

“Primordial mythological beings, vampire capitalists, sorceresses that control time, poisoned apples, radioactive snow and mad dictators – everything is out of proportion, everything is excessively far from the mundane, swimming carelessly among symbols and archetypes. But perhaps the extravagance, the generous layers of meaning and the stench of peeling, mouldy wallpaper remind us once again that cinema is capable of anything – even immersing viewers in magical realism, the absurdity of Slavic wonder tales or in a haze of folk horror. Audiences will be enthralled until they lose their breaths and fill their lungs with real, unadulterated cinematic pleasure instead of oxygen,” is how Sonora Broka, RIGA IFF Artistic Director, describes the films programmed for the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition.

The RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition 2021 lineup:

• Lamb (Dýrið), Valdimar Jóhannsson, IS, SE,  PL, 2021, 90′
• In the Mirror (Spogulī), Laila Pakalniņa, LV, LT, 2020, 90′, lv
• The Year Before the War (Gads pirms kara), Dāvis Sīmanis, LV, LT, CZ, 2021, 95′
• Natural Light (Természetes fény), Dénes Nagy, HU, LV, FR, DE, 2021, 103′
• Tzarevna Scaling (Дочь Рыбака), Uldus Bakhtiozina, RU, 2021, 70’
• The North Wind (Северный ветер), Renata Litvinova, Russia, 2021, 122’
• Bloodsuckers – A Marxist Vampire Comedy (Blutsauger), Julian Radlmaijer, Germany, 2021, 125’
• Never Gonna Snow Again (Śniegu już nigdy nie będzie), Małgorzata Szumowska, Michał Englert, Poland, Germany, 2020, 113’
• Runner (Bėgikė), Andrius Blaževičius, Lithuania, Czech Republic, 2021, 87’

The selected films will be judged by an experienced jury that includes film theorist and historian Viktors Freibergs, Jenni Domingo, the International Promotion Coordinator at the Finnish Film Foundation, Belarusian film curator and critic Igor Soukmanov, Ana Souza, Manager of the Programming department and Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as Swedish filmmaker Anna Eborn.

The winning film will receive the RIGA IFF main prize – a bronze rooster statuette, created in collaboration with artist Ervīns Broks. The statuette consists of eight parts that the winning director is free to hand out to members of the film’s crew. The winner of the feature film competition will also receive a cash prize of 3,000 EUR, courtesy of the BALTA insurance company.

The full RIGA IFF lineup will be announced on Tuesday, 15 September. For more information about the festival’s programme, events, and screenings, please visit the RIGA IFF website: rigaiff.lv.

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