Body and soul: the short national program displays this year a very interesting balance between movement, restlessness, self-reflection and personal musings.  We start with two love letters to Riga and its urban energy and poetry: Lines of Riga intertwines three different characters’ trajectories, attuning them delicately to the inner rhythm of the city, while Slush is a jazzier, more percussive street ride. Gazing at Sunsets is a moody trip for slackers, rendered in nostalgic old-school videogame aesthetics for an extra layer of escapism, beset by the eternal question “should I stay or should I go (from my small Latvian coastal town)?”    Then, looking back on where you came from or what you ran from is a common thread in the rest of the films, all united by the theme of family. The Informant is a sequel to last year’s The Observer, focusing this time on the director’s father’s conflicts with the KGB in the seventies. Yolo is a multi-generational portrait about the ripple effects of the director’s mother’s demise.  On a lighter side, Portrait of a Granny may be the definitive film for Latvian grandmothers. In the end, why not stay in the family for good or even better: going back to mum’s womb in the surreal Home Address – Womb? As George Bernard Shaw wrote, “if you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”. Or film it with imagination.

The international programme is bookended by the words “utopia” and “truth”, which define the world we live in: it’s about how we should always hope for better lives together and elsewhere. And then there’s truth, not just facts and statistics, but the kind that’s stranger than fiction. 24 shorts from Iran, Canada, Japan, Somalia and almost every corner of Europe will be presented across four thematic screenings. The competition programmes Pains, Trains and Other Mobiles, No Utopia is a Utopia, Take Two and Hard Truths set out on journeys more important than their destinations – and explore the emotional baggage we carry along the way; play with our longing for ideals and out-of-reach heavens; remind us that it takes only two to make a world; and uncover an uncomfortable truth, that in this world nobody knows anyone else.