SHORT RIGA
As an individual department within this year’s festival the team behind the wittily titled SHORT RIGA have devised a remarkable feat – altogether three competitions of new shorts from around the world, Baltic student films and a separate category for music videos. Showcased within three respective programmes SHORT RIGA will take over the newly established small theater KINO BIZE as well as organise workshops and host an award ceremony.
Leningrad, August 1991. TV broadcasts “The Swan Lake”. City streets fill with anxious people. There are rumours a coup has taken place, but there is no sure information from Moscow.
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Seventeen-year-old Sangaile dreams of flying but has a terrible fear of heights. At an air-show she meets a peer named Auste. Flirtatious and confident, Auste is a complete opposite of Sangaile; however, Auste earns Sangaile’s trust and learns her biggest secret.
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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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The unusual life of Polish anti-communist Adam Jacek Winkler is reanimated in a stylistically brilliant animation film based on Winkler’s drawings, photographs, and diaries. Winkler leaves his home country and settles in Paris; he is an ardent, impulsive and cynical adrenaline addict.
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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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Claude is twenty-three; he reads and cycles a lot, is interested in politics, and tries to live aesthetically, but he is also lost in his own life. Barbara will soon turn twenty, she studies acting, believes she’s an optimist, wants to travel and live in Paris.
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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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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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This film is dedicated to the heroes fallen for Ukraine. A simple, authentic story presents the world-view of the volunteer fighters, participating in the tragic Battle of Ilovaisk in August 2014. Without a voice-over or any other embellishments, this is the film that allows one to sense what war is really like. The author of the film, Ruslan Ganuschak, is a fighter of the controversial AZOV volunteer battalion and a war reporter.
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Abkhazia is one of those “frozen” conflict regions of the former Soviet Union. Its people are proud of their historical heritage and will not let such nuisances like dilapidated houses and regular power shortages to lessen their love of life.
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Helen, a priest, is asked to visit a teenage boy committed to a psychiatric hospital because he has killed an elderly couple and failed a suicide attempt. The boy believes his act was the will of God.
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The protagonist of the Swedish master Jan Troell’s biographical drama is Torgny Segerstedt, a journalist known for his uncompromising stand on Nazism at the time when most of his contemporaries preferred the diplomatic approach.
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Junnu and Raisa meet at a children’s home for problematic youths, a place more like a prison than a social care centre. They steal a car and manage to escape. They end up on a paradise-like island where their journey turns into a surreal trip on drugs, but reality cannot be kept at bay for long.
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Based on a popular children’s book by a Swedish author Max Lundgren, the story was made into a TV series that quickly became a beloved household name, before it was finally made into an exciting cinematic adventure in the best traditions of the genre.
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Anna is milking the cows, Jakob smokes pot, Berni works on a telescope and Ulrike celebrates her birthday. So far, everything is fine in Otto’s farm. When Ulrike’s coffee cup breaks on the kitchen floor, something dark breaks loose. Sometimes the devil has to take the hindmost.
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A journey through the abstract situation of a practice of the voluntary fire brigade. It is a poetic, sensuous short film about the construction of reality and the pursuit of meaning and belief.
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Collector of cursed musicians, unreasonable murderers, fairground freaks, paranoid revolutionaries, flatulists and suicidal anchorites, a patient in a psychiatric institution presents a gallery of the great names in history who haunt him.
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Pechory is a town on the southeastern border of Estonia and Russia. Most Estonians left the area after the Soviet takeover. To Light is a poetic documentary about a mother and her son, who decided to stay behind when the Estonian town of Petseri became the Russian town of Pechory. After seventy years there is hardly anything Estonian left in the town. Linda and Mart Kallas try to maintain contact with their homeland, but that is no cure for their loneliness. Now they only have each other. The mother needs the son and the son needs the mother. The mother is at the very end of her life. The son is searching for a light in the darkness.
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In this world we tend to think of relationships as something that have a beginning and a potential end. What if we would be robbed of the ability for actual destruction? What if we simply could not run away?
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In response to continued conflict in Ukraine and the reintroduction of conscription in Lithuania, video production company Unicorn Video have sourced clips from several propaganda movies found in the Lithuanian state archives, combining them with a contemporary deep house soundtrack.
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