Inviting audiences to discover present-day reflections on tomorrow’s cinema, Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF, 15–25 October) announces the lineup for the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition. Nine films – including subtle documentary stories, bold cinematic debuts and the latest works by established filmmakers – from Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany and Sweden will be screened at the RIGA IFF home, Splendid Palace, and compete for the festival’s main prize. Tickets for the screenings are available on the festival website, rigaiff.lv, and at Biļešu Serviss box offices. Learn more: rigaiff.lv/ffc.

Representing radically different schools, traditions, and artistic visions, the films of the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition each year reflect shifts and contemporary trends in cinema. For the festival’s 13th edition, nine distinctive works by filmmakers from the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries, created on different sides of the same sea, have been selected from a record number of submissions. Feature Film Competition curator and RIGA IFF Creative Director Sonora Broka introduces the programme:

“Now more than ever, we can feel great changes approaching; we can feel the paint beginning to peel from the familiar world order, reminding us that everything new is something old we know well. Weary of autocracy and technocracy, of values that can be reduced to figures and calculations, we seek support and comfort in belonging. Belonging, fitting in, identity, recognition and the power of community – these are the stories that new cinema wants and knows how to tell.”

Two Latvian films will celebrate their national premieres in the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition. On 20 October, legendary filmmaker Laila Pakalniņa will return to RIGA IFF screens with the national premiere of the poem of moving and still images Cat On My Mind (Es domāju par kaķi). The story, which transports audiences into Latvia’s past from half a century ago, will be accompanied by a photography exhibition by the film’s cinematographer Gints Bērziņš, on view at Splendid Palace during the festival. Meanwhile, on 23 October, Weeping Rocks, directed by Kārlis Bergs, will celebrate its national premiere. The documentary essay, in which an eccentric Californian entomologist studies changes in the world through butterflies and reflects on survival strategies, was screened in IDFA’s Luminous section, where it was nominated for the Best Debut Award.

Lithuanian cinema will be represented in the competition by Andrius Blaževičius’ How to Divorce During the War (Skyrybos karo metu), Lithuania’s submission for the Academy Award, which has received awards in Hong Kong, Las Palmas, Sundance and elsewhere. The latest work by the winner of the 2021 RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition is a divorce drama set in the shadow of the war in Ukraine that raises uncomfortable questions about ourselves. Meanwhile, Estonian director Eeva Mägi’s Mo Papa, a drama marked by Estonian restraint yet charged with emotional intensity, tells a story about the warmth of the soul against the cold of the system. An award winner at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the film was made without a script in the traditional sense – it was put together from sensations, fragments, experiences and improvisation.

The selection also includes director Isabelle Stever’s drama I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming (Selten wache ich träumend auf), screened in the Locarno Film Festival’s competition – a collaboration between German and Ukrainian filmmakers about love, freedom, and identity against the backdrop of an ongoing war – as well as the romantic comedy No Good Man. In this blood sister to the cult classic Casablanca (1942), which opened this year’s Berlinale, director Shahrbanoo Sadat turns to untangling a personal story through the lenses of journalism and politics, whilst resurrecting the rom-com genre.

Nordic cinema also shines through in the selection. Swedish director Julia Thelin’s contemporary satire The Patron (Mecenaten) takes aim at identity theft and the vanity fair in a world where art galleries and their curators call the shots. Nipster, the feature debut of director Sunniva Eir Tangvik Kveum, takes the coming-of-age story into thriller territory, reflecting on the dark side of teenage introversion and the appeal of dangerous ideas. Also selected for the competition is Norwegian director Marlene Emilie Lyngstad’s debut Cute. The absurd, thoroughly provocative and surprisingly “cute” film about growing up differently will have its world premiere later in September in the New Directors competition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

The films will be evaluated by a jury of film industry professionals, who will also present the main competition award – a bronze rooster statuette and a EUR 5,000 cash prize. The jury comprises producer and Studio Zentral Head of Production Henning Falk; Trickster Pictures founder, director, screenwriter and producer Matīss Kaža; Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival programmer, curator and critic Milani Perera; producer and Ánorâk Film co-founder Emile Hertling Péronard; and Olivia Popp, curator, programmer and film critic.

Tickets for the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition screenings are available on the festival website (rigaiff.lv) or at Biļešu Serviss box offices. The Festival Pass is also available – your shortcut to every RIGA IFF programme screening in Riga.

Latvia’s largest celebration of cinema, RIGA IFF, will take place from 15 to 25 October at the festival’s home, Splendid Palace, as well as Forum Cinemas, the National Library of Latvia, the Rothko Museum in Daugavpils, Kino Cēsis, Siguldas devons and other venues. Over 11 days and more than 100 screenings, the programme, guided by the motto “YOU ARE HERE”, will serve as a reliable guide beyond the familiar film landscape, inviting audiences to discover unique stories, vivid emotions and highlights of contemporary cinema.

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.