RIGA IFF SELECTION
Consider this the festival's signature programme – it is a research of sorts into the ever elusive boundary between the stronghold of the cinema as we know and love it – the Western tradition and culture of film making and the engaging force of the cinema that we are yet to define – be it specifically Northern, Southern or Eastern influenced. “These are the new auteur features that hold as much of the new globalized world in them as they demonstrate their roots and their influences. The selection's purpose is to search for the auteur – whether that spirit comes from a personal space or a traditional heritage,” says the festival's artistic director Sonora Broka.
Saul, a prisoner at Auschwitz who is forced to work at the camp’s crematorium assigns a special meaning to the last days of his life by deciding to bury a corpse of a little boy in accordance with Jewish traditions.
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In a near future, single people are forced to go the Hotel where within 45 days they must find a partner, or they will be made into animals. When David’s (Colin Farrell) attempts at winning favour with the women at the Hotel fall through, and the allotted period of time is dangerously getting closer, he runs away and joins the rebellious Loners who live in the woods, where he unfortunately falls in love.
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This is a sad tale of a life and death illuminated by the paparazzi flashes – of singer Amy Winehouse’s brilliant career and her untimely death.
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If Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino made a film together, this is what it would look like: an eccentric Western consisting equally of romance, adventure, action and black humour.
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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a queen who wanted to have a child so much she was ready to sacrifice everything; a princess who dreamed of marrying a strong and handsome prince; a king who fell in love with a mysterious owner of a beautiful voice…
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Eastern Europe, 1835. Two riders cross a barren landscape in the middle of Wallachia. They are the gendarme Costandin and his son. Together they are searching for a “gypsy slave” who has run away from his nobleman master and is suspected of having an affair with the noble’s wife.
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The films of Nanni Moretti, who could be Woody Allen’s Italian cousin, are tragicomedies of the everyday – they bring together humour, vulnerability, and a deep understanding of a human life, with all its joys and sorrows.
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Célestine arrives in a sleepy village from Paris to start a job as a chambermaid with the Lanlaires, a bourgeois couple. The young woman is received by a harassing host, his sadistic wife, and a cold treatment from the rest of the servants.
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Argentina is on the verge of a collapse, as is, perhaps, the rest of the world. A man joins a group of people in a strange training camp in the jungle. Trainees are taught various survival skills while also get to understand that when the society goes down its self-governing laws will no longer apply – a realization that awakens their darkest instincts.
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