Feature Film Competition

The competition programme showcases films from the Baltic Sea region and Nordic Countries that are characterised by their use of innovative cinematic language and distinct artistic expression. The films in this programme have no genre or style restrictions and can include documentaries, narratives, animated films, or any hybrid genre.

The geographical scope of this competition covers surprisingly different schools, traditions, and visions. The selected works embody RIGA IFF’s reflections on the cinema of tomorrow, today.

RIGA IFF is looking for distinct voices and auteurs from the Baltic Sea region and the Nordic countries that use an innovative cinematic language. The RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition reflects transitions and contemporary trends in cinema; by establishing a specific geographic frame, these trends become even more intriguing as the cinematic works made on different sides of the same sea represent distinctly different schools, traditions, languages, and visions. The 10 films that are ultimately selected for the competition form a present-day contemplation on the cinema of tomorrow.

Entries

The competition programme is comprised of up to 10 feature films with a minimum running time of 60 minutes for which the majority of production financing has been sourced in the Baltic Sea region (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Sweden) and/or in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, including their associated territories – Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Åland Islands). There are no genre restrictions – documentaries, narratives, animated films, or any hybrid genre will be considered.

For films produced in the Russian Federation it is a prerequisite not to have received any direct or indirect state funding.
All submitted films must have been completed after 1 July 2021, and they can not have been screened in Latvia before the RIGA IFF 2022 dates. There is one exception to this rule – although it is preferable that Latvian films premiere at RIGA IFF 2022, this is not a requirement.

Prize

The 10 selected titles will be judged by an international jury consisting of industry experts, filmmakers, and representatives from the international film festival community.

The winning director will receive the Golden Rooster, an eight-piece figurine designed in collaboration with artist Ervins Broks that can be shared among the crew. The winner also receives a monetary prize of EUR 4,000. The Award Ceremony takes place on the second Saturday of the festival.

Deadline

The call for submissions opens on 22 March 2022 and closes on 30 June. The submission fee is EUR 10 per entry and all submissions are free of charge for the first month, until 22 April. The results will be announced by 10 September 2022.

Submission closed

Regulations (PDF)

Competitions

Karolis Kaupinis

Karolis Kaupinis received an MA in Comparative Politics from Vilnius University, where he made a theoretical film on the concept of freedom during the Third National Awakening in the Baltic states. After working as a journalist at the Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, he made several award-winning short films: The Noisemaker (2014) and Watchkeeping (2017). Both shorts have screened at festivals in Latvia. Later, Kaupinis made his feature debut with the historical fantasy Nova Lituania (2019), which won prizes at many festivals, including the RIGA IFF International Feature Competition. He is currently working on the project Hunger Strike Breakfast.

Uldis Cekulis

Uldis Cekulis founded the independent production company VFS FILMS more than 20 years ago. As one of the most important pioneers and representatives of Latvian cinema, Cekulis has worked in more than 20 countries around the world. He was named one of seven international innovators to watch at the 2007 MIPdoc in Cannes and has worked on more than 50 documentary projects and television docuseries both as a producer and as a cinematographer. Most of Cekulis' films have received international awards and nominations, e.g. from Shanghai, Karlovy Vary, Warsaw, IDFA, and from the European Film Academy. One of Cekulis’ last films, The Rossellinis (2020), opened RIGA IFF in 2021.

Marcin Pieńkowski

Marcin Pieńkowski has been the director of the largest Polish film event, the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław, since 2020, having previously worked as its artistic director. He runs the New Horizons Association distribution company, co-founded the New Horizons VOD platform that is dedicated to art house cinema, and the PR agency Storyteller. Additionally, Pieńkowski works as a film marketing and communications expert, a lecturer, a film historian, an editor, and is the co-author of several books.

Barbara Wurm

Barbara Wurm is a programmer, curator, film critic and researcher. Her current research interests at the Humboldt University of Berlin are Eastern European culture, and film history and theory. Wurm has a background in Eastern European cinema and her doctoral thesis focused on Soviet-era educational films. She has studied Slavic and Comparative Literature in Vienna, Moscow, Munich, Leipzig, and Berlin and has served on the selection committees of the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, as well as many other festivals and cinematheques. Currently, Wurm is a member of the selection committees at Berlinale and the goEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden.

Ollie Charles

Ollie Charles has worked in film marketing for the last decade, focusing on the global distribution of independent arthouse films. He has worked for Peccadillo Pictures, Picturehouse Entertainment, and Trafalgar Releasing. Charles is currently part of the streaming and film distribution team for the platform Mubi. He has managed campaigns for films such as Kelly Reichardt's First Cow (2020) and Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021). Current projects include Charlotte Wells' Aftersun (2022) and Lukas Dhont's Close (2022).