The RIGA IFF Short Film International Competition seeks to highlight new auteur films of various genres and techniques from all over the world. RIGA IFF is one of the 30 festivals that nominates one 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 distinctive voice. Audience members are guaranteed to find reasons to laugh, quarrel, or even shed a tear or two – often together with the filmmakers themselves!

10 Latvian short films for the 10th edition of the Riga International Film Festival: the national competition displays a wide array of talents from the Latvian film scene, each with their own distinct and personal artistic voice. Some say that cinema is a beautiful lie so it’s not surprising to find the theme of truth running through some of the shorts selected for the programme: how to find it, welcome, and embrace it in its complexity, and sometimes having to fight it.  Resistance is Futile is at the same time a moving account of a fragile friendship and a portrait of millennials. Set in an almost horror-like atmosphere, Sacrificial Lamb focuses on the trials of a family living in the countryside. Ksenia is a slow-burning documentary about a young woman dealing with the justice system and how the way that it operates can tell us a lot about a society. The programme also allows us to escape or tame the world: existential threats are rendered in beautiful 16mm film, its analogue magic achieving a hypnotic result in films such as Importance of Hydration, Thanatophobia, and The Silva Method. Limo is an exciting car ride in the future. Animation summons up a beautiful and quiet chaos in Debris and the secret music of life and death in In The End.  Finally, the charming Miru Falls in Love leads us through the highs and lows of a theatre assistant and sums up the various states of mind of all these different shorts pretty well: these are films that dream, search, wander, stand tall, doubt, and float through time. They are us.