The first weekend of the Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF, 17–27 October) will feature a unique screening – festival visitors will be among the first in the World to experience the recently digitally restored Paris, Texas (1984) by director Wim Wenders on the big screen. On 19 October, this gold standard of the road movie subgenre will inaugurate the section ZEITGEIST DEUTSCHLAND, created in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Riga. Tickets for the screening can be purchased on the festival’s website (rigaiff.lv) and at Biļešu Serviss sales points.

“It’s a different film today, even though nothing has changed. I see it differently now. I’m happy with the film I see. But it’s definitely different to the one I saw in 1984. We’re closer than ever before to the film originally caught by the camera.”

That is how in an interview with the Wim Wenders Foundation the director describes the film Paris, Texas, which premiered in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984. Having received several prestigious awards, including the Palme d’Or and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award, Paris, Texas is considered Wenders’s best-known, most recognized, and most cited film. This spring, 40 years after its premiere, the quintessential road movie that has achieved cult status among moviegoers returned to Cannes in a new 4K digitally restored form.

In his early career, Wenders, one of the most prominent representatives of the new German cinema movement, became fascinated by American mythology and filmmaking traditions, achieving artistic and emotional maturity with this odyssey of human self-understanding. As the mood alternates between the visually stunning shots by cinematographer Robby Müller and the hypnotic sounds of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar, playwright Sam Shepard’s script unveils the real meaning of change, words, and silence. Playing the lead roles of Travis and Jane are Harry Dean Stanton, a favourite of Lynch, and the captivating Nastassja Kinski, whose image in her pink angora sweater has become a memorable movie quote in its own right.

Alongside Paris, Texas, the ZEITGEIST DEUTSCHLAND program also includes a special screening of Wenders’s short films. This screening will feature four selected miniatures made from 1967 to 1982, a period when Wenders’s work was considered too extraordinary for the big screen and too ambitious for the altars of contemporary art. The films reveal the author’s faith in experimentation and paint a portrait of an untamed artist in his youth. The alterations of images and their relationship with colour and time are interspersed with reflections on the pain of filmmaking and the future of this art form.

The screening of Paris, Texas on 19 October at 18:00 in the Large Hall of the Splendid Palace will open the ZEITGEIST DEUTSCHLAND – a section dedicated to German cinema, organized in cooperation with the Goethe Institute in Riga. Meanwhile, the selection of Wenders’s short films will be screened on October 18 at 21:00 in the Small Hall of the Splendid Palace. Tickets are available on the festival website rigaiff.lv and at Biļešu Serviss sales points.

From 17 to 27 October, RIGA IFF will delight the senses of filmgoers with more than 100 screenings of bold and fresh filmmaker visions, selected from the world’s most prestigious film festival programmes, as well as from the kindred Baltic Sea region cinema. This season, the festival’s central theme, Witnessing the World of Another, focuses on cinema as a vehicle for appreciation and empathy – RIGA IFF team invites the viewers to explore new horizons and filmic universes. Follow festival updates on rigaiff.lv and festival social media accounts, as well as by subscribing to RIGA IFF newsletter.

RIGA IFF’s main partner is the media and technology company Tet. The festival is made possible with the support of the State Culture Capital Foundation, EU programme “Creative Europe – MEDIA”, Riga City Council, and the National Film Centre of Latvia.