In the world of cinema, the short film is the bravest and most explicit mirror of our times. To help you navigate this wide range of short films, we’ll be curating selections where each work is like a tiny kernel of corn that, once projected onto the screen, warms up and explodes into a popcorn-like cloud of reflections, emotions, laughter, or tears. No one will be left unmoved!
Anne Gaschütz
Anne Gaschütz is a festival organiser and curator who grew up in Dresden. She later moved to the United Kingdom to study film in Wales. She returned to her hometown after several years to develop short film projects at Filoufilm. She has been working at Filmfest Dresden since 2013, initially in the programming department, but later became in charge of the forum Visegrád in Short(s). Gaschütz is currently one of the festival's directors. Since 2021, she has been a member of the selection committee for the Pardi di domani competition at the Locarno Film Festival. She is one of the founders of the Talking Shorts platform, which is an initiative focused on short film criticism.
Inja Korać
Inja Korać studied Political Science and Journalism in Zagreb and Audiovisual Content Production in Spain. She works as a feature film and shorts curator at the Motovun and Beldocs film festivals, and is the Director of Industry at the Zagreb International Film Festival. She has worked as a documentary film producer and curator for nearly ten years. Korać has experience in film distribution and did an internship at Dogwoof Sales in the United Kingdom. She has also worked in the festival department at Taskovski Films and coordinated film distribution in Croatia.
Sander Joon
Sander Joon is an Estonian animation director whose short films Velodrool (2015), Moulinet (2017), and Sounds Good (2018) have been screened in Annecy, Leipzig, Ottawa, Stuttgart, Fredrikstad, Go Short, GLAS, and many other festivals. Joon also makes music videos, for example for Tommy Cash, he DJs, and participated in a commercial for Rick and Morty. He also worked as a 2D artist on the award-winning film The Old Man Movie (2019) and teaches traditional animation at the Estonian Academy of Arts. His latest short film Sierra won a prize at the SHORT RIGA Test Screenings in 2021 and is currently touring festivals having qualified for the Academy Awards.
It is impossible to find and comprehend all the trends, narrative features, and stylistic subtleties of the Latvian short film scene from these five works, which are nuanced fragments of their creators’ worlds, offering various delights and moods. But that is not the aim of this competition, rather, it wants to pull you into the stories made right here, next to you. There is Can’t Help Myself, a scorching and introspective dance of thoughts and words; 81 Meters, an account of the pandemic that rewrites more than 120 years of the history of screens as a destination; then there is Bonds of Time that with its bold filmmaking finds flashes and rhythms of intimate observation; Paperhead, a short film that through human and camera movement reveals the self-reproach that is born in our minds; and finally Where is the Key? that addresses the continuation of our existential condition, our search for a way out, for peace, or for a satiation of our longing. These films draw an exciting map of possibilities with honest feelings and precious skills – longing, nostalgia, hope, imagination, and inventiveness.
The RIGA IFF International Short Film Competition seeks to highlight new auteur films of various genres and techniques from all over the world. RIGA IFF is one of the 27 festivals that nominates a short film as a candidate for the European Film Awards.
The curator and the selection committee evaluate submissions, look for individual works at other film festivals, film and art schools, and reach out to independent short filmmakers. There are as many films as there are opinions, and as many creators as there are stories.
The only things the selected films have in common is a maximum running time of 30 minutes and a strong personality. Audience members are guaranteed to find reasons to quarrel, laugh, or even shed a tear or two – often together with the filmmakers themselves!
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