SHORT RIGA
This includes the International competition and the Baltic student short film programmes, the Baltic music video competition programme and... lots of parties! Because it makes no sense to watch a whole lot of incredible cinema and leave without having a chat about it afterwards. Look for the "S" sign (or is it a snake?) for adventure – cinematic, social and just fun!
The old gardener works day to night in harmony with the nature’s rhythm and the wisdom of the ancient Latvian lives. His happiness and fulfilment is a garden, which no longer belongs to him, but he feels like it does. Younger house owners, desiring to make the gardener’s life easier, get a new gardener. Old gardener’s love of garden and an unwillingness to share it with anyone makes him decide an inevitable decision to stay in the garden of his family forever.
At dawn a group of peasants tries to rescue the body of a young man from the inside of a well. Women veil their faces in silence while men endure the situation. In the center of it all, a mother awaits her son’s salvation.
The Living Need Light, The Dead Need Music is a visual and musical journey through the fantastical funeral traditions and rituals of south Vietnam. It attempts to engage in dialogue with funerary traditions that pulsate in the same vein throughout the global south…
Spring 1941. Shortly before Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia, with economic cooperation between the two countries still in full swing, a delegation of German engineers including Hans (Jakob Diehl) travel to the Soviet Union to work on the development of optical lenses in a glass factory. War is in the air and the atmosphere is tense. When Hans accidentally causes the oven to explode and several people lose their lives, the situation escalates. Lieber Hans is an exciting historical drama with a star ensemble of German acting talent, featuring Jakob Diehl, Birgit Minichmayr, Mark Waschke and Marc Hosemann.
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.
Guy Maddin says it’s important to plant a grain the viewer’s eye to keep them alert—a motto he has been faithful to throughout his work of creation, not least in his latest film The Forbidden Room. In this playful, and Venice-prized, documentary we get a delightful trip through Maddin’s richly populated universe.
Guy Maddin says it’s important to plant a grain the viewer’s eye to keep them alert—a motto he has been faithful to throughout his work of creation, not least in his latest film The Forbidden Room. In this playful, and Venice-prized, documentary we get a delightful trip through Maddin’s richly populated universe.
Friends Bulder and Modika’s snowball fight is interrupted by the quiet Lex who invited Modika to watch snowflakes. The naughty Bulder does everything to get his friend’s attention back.
Lina and Tiena’s mother suddenly has to return to Vietnam. During her absence Lina takes care of her little sister and the family restaurant as she tries to keep it secret that her sister and she are living on their own. Meanwhile, Pauline, who lives across the yard, suspects something. She is something of a sleuth armed with a powerful telescope. Recommended age: 6+
