LIELAIS KRISTAPS. SELECTION
The national competition takes place for the duration of a month before the festival when all the Latvian productions are screened within the forum of the festival Lielais Kristaps (named after the Latvian mythical hero The Great Christopher). During Riga IFF in collaboration with Lielais Kristaps a selection of the newest Latvian film shall be presented to an international audience.
A wild terrain is like an open book where one can record one’s own story. A filmmaker from the North and a photographer from the South go to an alien land. It’s populated by people worn out by history; time tends to stand still, but any new encounter is like a broken mirror with one’s reflection.
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Having ruthlessly lain off striking workers, the owner of a maritime company decides to go on a leisurely trip to Italy with his young wife. On the eve before the departure, his luxurious mansion is broken into by one of the sacked workers, a man in an orange jacket.
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Norie, a Japanese anthropology student, comes to Latvia to do a Masters research of the Suiti region. There she meets one of oldest Suiti singers Marija Steimane, also known as Ruch, who doesn’t speak a word of English, but she sings. Norie learns the Latvian language and songs.
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Ieva Ozoliņa’s debut is a personal thriller. During 1990s, her father, a president of a bank going bankrupt, goes missing. The father has been on Interpol’s list of wanted men for the last sixteen years, until one day news arrive that a man fitting the profile has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Kuala Lumpur.
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In the middle of a grey sea there is the grey Isle of Seals. On the grey island grey hunters lead their grey lives. All here is simple and harsh. Seals and hunters cohabit in a brutal harmony. One day a photographer arrives on the island to document their environment.
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At the end of the Second World War, near an Estonian island a Latvian steamship Rasma ran onto a mine and sank. On board it had manufacturing equipment from Riga Sewing Factory, Husqvarna bicycles, crops and flour.
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“It’s about time”, says a piece of paper stuck to a windowpane. These words encourage a lonely man to go out into town, but the old man is too slow, and dressing up takes too much time for him to leave the house before it gets dark.
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His own reflection in the mirror seemed so important to him until he no longer saw himself in it. Jurģis Krāsons is the most awarded production designer in Latvia, who occasionally turns his efforts to animation.
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