With curious eyes and an open mind, the festival offers a glimpse into the past and present of cinema, bringing together the works of talented and courageous directors – from overlooked voices deserving of recognition to masters whose films have shaped cinema history.

This year, RIGA IFF puts the spotlight on the eurothriller – a genre born and bred in the cradle of European cinema. As social divides deepened, this subgenre took shape in the post-war years. Later, the rise of the international festival circuit brought global attention to the eurothriller, particularly from the 1980s through the 1990s and into the new millennium. Eurothrillers have been widely referenced, remade in both Hollywood and Bollywood, and have helped shape the vocabulary of crime drama. Today’s TV series and billion-dollar franchises would look very different without the distinctive metallic-grey palette of the eurothriller.

Although the term “eurothriller” originated in literature, in cinema it has come to mean a world of finely calibrated atmosphere, critique and subjectivity. RIGA IFF invites you to take a trip through Europe – a continent of Nordic noir dangers, French cinematic tension, collective paranoia and serpentine plots.