Short Film National Competition

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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.

Whether they are animated, narrative, documentary, or experimental, the competition is looking for short films with a distinct voice made in Latvia. Up to six short films will be selected.

Entries

We welcome short films and audiovisual works with a running time of up to 30 minutes, and with a completion date of no earlier than 1 January 2022. This competition accepts works by both established and emerging professionals who are Latvian citizens, were born in, or are long-term residents of Latvia (at least 2 years). We also consider works that have been produced in Latvia, made by a Latvian director abroad, or films that list Latvia as one of its production countries.

Prize

The selected short film titles are judged by an international jury consisting of industry experts, filmmakers, and representatives from the international film festival community. The film that generates the greatest passion and the liveliest discussions about the very essence of cinema will receive a specially designed award and a monetary prize of EUR 1,000. The RIGA IFF Award Ceremony takes place on the second Saturday of the festival.

Candidacy for the European Short Film 2024 Award

The jury selects a single candidate for the European Short Film 2024 award from the films screened in the RIGA IFF Short Film National and International Competitions. Eligible directors must be born in Europe or hold a passport from a European country (the European Film Academy defines Europe as both EU and non-EU countries and includes Israeli and Palestinian passport holders), the film must have been produced in 2022 or 2023, and the running time cannot exceed 30 minutes.

Deadline

The call for submissions opens on 15 March 2023 and closes on 30 June. The submission fee is EUR 10 per entry and all submissions are free of charge until 29 March. The results will be announced by 10 September 2023.

Submission closed

Regulations (PDF)

Competitions

Ivana Kvesić

Ivana Kvesić is a versatile art and film curator, cultural project manager, and director of the Fantoche International Animation Film Festival in Baden, Switzerland. The animation festival, which has been running for almost 30 years, has grown over the years to become both the largest in Switzerland and one of the most important forums for animation in Europe. She is currently the President of the Executive Committee of Cinema Club Xenix in Zürich and a member of the Board of the Swiss film magazine Filmbulletin, as well as representing SWAN (Swiss Women's Audiovisual Network). Kvesić has worked as a co-director of the Swiss Youth Film Day festival and part of the selection committee of the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur and Rote Fabrik.

Romanna Lobach

Romanna Lobach is a Ukrainian-born Greek actress, artist, and producer who founded and runs the production company Akran. She studied acting at the Athens Conservatoire and gained experience in the advertising industry, working as a creative copywriter for the advertising agency McCann. She first appeared on screen at the age of 11, taking on roles in more than 20 feature and short films that have been screened at the most prestigious festivals in Europe and North America. Among her best known roles are her work on Dimitris Nakos' March 4 (2015) and Ariane Labed's Olla (2019). In her practice, Lobach is intrigued by the possibilities offered by feminist and experimental filmmaking strategies, collaborative working environments, transmediality and indigenous cinema.

Vladan Petković

Vladan Petković is one of Europe's most visible film personalities. He is a Serbian film critic, journalist, curator and festival consultant with more than 20 years of experience. He studied cultural management, theatre, and radio at the University of the Arts in Belgrade. He has written for Screen International about the film industry in the Balkan region for two decades. Petković is published with enviable regularity in Cineuropa and numerous Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian publications. He has contributed as an adviser to festival programmes in the Netherlands (IDFA), Croatia (ZagrebDox and Rab Film Festival), Northern Macedonia (Skopje Film Festival) and elsewhere, and founded the GoCritic! training programme for young film journalists and critics in cooperation with Cineuropa.

Chantal Lian

Chantal Lian has been working in the film industry for more than 12 years, as a programmer and curator at major French festivals such as the Les Arcs International Film Festival and the Champs-Élysées Film Festival for independent cinema where she also established the US in Progress Paris programme to promote cooperation between the European and North American film industries. Lian is an experienced film distributor with experience at respected companies such as Wild Bunch and Sophie Dulac Distribution, where she worked on commercially successful independent films such as Love & Friendship (2016) and Menashe (2017). She has also worked at Oxbelly, a training course for screenwriters and directors, and is currently studying art therapy.

Qiu Yang

Chinese-born Qiu Yang studied directing at the Victorian College of the Arts in Australia. He has made both virtual and live-action short films, which have screened successfully at the Cannes Film Festival, Semaine de la Critique, the Venice Film Festival's virtual reality section and elsewhere. His graduation short film Under the Sun (2015) was selected for the Cinéfondation student film competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and his live-action short film A Gentle Night (2017) won the Palme d'Or in the short film section of the 70th Cannes Film Festival, making Yang the first Chinese filmmaker to receive this award. His most recent film, She Runs (2019), won the Leitz Cine Discovery Award at Cannes Critics' Week. Yang is currently working on his first feature-length film, has been selected for the Résidence du Festival residency programme, and been awarded the prestigious CNC Screenwriting Grant.

Foreword by the programme curator: “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books”, Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of The Idols. Well, then the national competition has the ambition to say a lot in ten short films. This programme says a lot about the Latvian film scene, its ability to touch our hearts through different means, whether straightforward, poetic, live-action, or animated. It’s not twilight, but rather a new dawn that illuminates new, multifaceted talents each year, who constantly question our dreams, hopes, fears, doubts, and cinema itself.