LIELAIS KRISTAPS. SELECTION
In collaboration with the team behind the Latvian national film award Lielais Kristaps the festival presents it's very own selection of the newest titles produced in Latvia – films to be perceived as a part of the world cinema of today, beyond language and country of origin, yet so aware and proud of it. Naturally – the festival grows in sync with the film culture and industry here in Latvia, and every year presents new challenges and reveals unexpected strengths. Latvian film in an international context is still a challenging feat but would you just look at the wonders that this meeting brings from time to time!<
Intent on repairing a rift in their relationship, Anna and Juhan retreat to a seaside house lent to them by well-heeled friends. After witnessing an accident on rocky shore, they take in a wounded woman and her husband – a couple they find they have a lot in common with. Anna and Juhan begin to pretend they own the house, engaging their guests in a game of domination that propels their relationship to the brink of destruction.
Signe Birkova’s experimental animation tells a story about a cowboy trying to navigate an urban landscape. The man’s journey to the city is interrupted by a brutal force. While he has lost his senses his consciousness is confronted by the unconscious in which, transformed into a black marionette, the cowboy lives though a painful process of redemption.
A story of a small Minotaur who tries to find playmates in the endless labyrinth while his Dad is at work. He only manages to meet mythological characters busy with their own ambitions.
When he was twenty, Ilya (Elijahu) Rips, a mathematics student at the University of Latvia, tried to burn himself alive in central Riga. It was a protest against Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. Now, for more than forty years he has been living in Israel; he is an orthodox Jew and considered one of the most acclaimed and original mathematicians in the world.
At the end of this film someone will quit smoking. But in the beginning one Scandinavian woman almost died because the main character lit a cigarette in an airport.
This is a story of a perfect life in a perfect country. This is a story of how this perfect life is supplied with perfect young people. It shows how much effort the people of North Korea invest in keeping the perfect order. Every single Korean sacrifices his life for this cause. The film follows the process of the creation of the perfect world.
A lonesome streetsweeper’s letter written on the first day of a new year. A year spent watching the seasons change and dreaming of a New Year’s miracle.
This is a moving tale about Raja, 17, and her brother Robis, 12, who are forced to live with their grandmother after the death of their father and the departure of their mother who has gone abroad in search of work. The grandmother wants to sell the country property their father used to own, but the situation takes a different course after the grandmother accidentally dies.
In Soviet mythology there was a popular tale about a boy, Pavlik Morozov, who informed on his father who was discontent with the Soviet government, which resulted in Pavlik’s being murdered by his own family. For Soviet propaganda Morozov’s ‘feat’ was a clear example of how any Soviet citizen should live: become an informer whatever the price.
