From Festival Favourites to New Projects: Lithuanian Cinema at RIGA IFF

The 13th Riga International Film Festival opens today, inviting audiences to step away from the bustle of everyday life and discover cinematic stories that offer fresh perspectives on the world. Two Lithuanian films will screen in the festival’s competition programmes, while its industry events will feature projects in development and works nearing completion by Lithuanian filmmakers.

How to Divorce During the War, directed by Andrius Blaževičius, will compete in the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, where Blaževičius received the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award.

This emotionally charged drama centres on Marija, an ambitious department head at an advertising agency, and Vytas, a film director searching for his place in life. When Marija finally finds the courage to say she wants a divorce, she chooses the worst possible moment for an honest conversation.

The film stars Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė, Marius Repšys and Amelija Adomaitytė. A co-production with Luxembourg, Ireland and Czechia, it is produced by Marija Razgutė of M FILMS.

Pacific Islands, directed by Adas Burkšaitis, has been selected for the Short Film International Competition. The film is produced by Greta Akcijonaitė, Kotryna Ramanauskaitė, Ramojus Petrauskas and Aurimas Pukevičius of Magic Film.

A middle-aged woman returns to a hotel where a significant event in her past took place. There, she meets a young man, and her visit takes an unexpected turn. Pacific Islands explores our relationship with the past and the sense of nostalgia that offers a temporary escape from reality.

The Nordic Highlights programme will feature Nightborn, a Finnish-Lithuanian-French-UK co-production directed by Hanna Bergholm and co-produced by Artūras Dvinelis of Filmai LT.

Hoping to start a perfect family, Saga and her husband Jon move to an isolated house in the woods where she spent her childhood. When their long-awaited son is born, Saga realises that something is wrong with him, and strange, inexplicable things soon begin to happen in their home.

Shot in Lithuania, the film stars Seidi Haarla and Rupert Grint. It had its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year.

Running alongside the festival, the industry platform RIGA IFF FORUM will offer RIGA IFF SHOWCASE and SHORT RIGA Test Screenings, as well as meetings with festival representatives, opportunities to explore the Baltic animation industry, and other activities designed to build professional connections.

The series Happy New Year! and two Lithuanian co-productions, Tabita and The Others, have been selected for RIGA IFF SHOWCASE, which introduces projects in development and production to potential partners.

Happy New Year!, directed by Montis Norvaišis and produced by Lineta Lasiauskaitė of Plopsas and BIG DRAMA, is a ten-episode drama following the events of a notorious New Year’s Eve party and the police investigation that follows.

Crowds of young people arrive at a manor house, ready to celebrate. Their host, nineteen-year-old Vincentas, is throwing a massive party at his parents’ home, letting hundreds of strangers inside.

As the night unfolds, the party spirals out of control. A cocktail of intoxicants, jealousy and desire leads the guests to make disastrously bad choices. The most exciting night of the year gradually turns into a nightmare, and the historic manor becomes a scene of crime, lies and revenge.

Tabita, a Latvian-Dutch-Lithuanian co-production directed by Juris Kursietis and co-produced by Lukas Trimonis of In Script, follows a young woman with Down syndrome who finishes school without a clear plan for the future. Her father, Andris, decides to take charge of her life, but his actions strain his marriage and bring him to a crisis point. He must let go of his unrealistic ambitions and see Tabita for who she truly is.

Another co-production in the selection is The Others, a Ukrainian-Lithuanian project directed by Olga Gibelinda and co-produced by Stasys Baltakis of Film Jam.

In this dystopian psychological drama, two officers vie for the post of commandant in an occupied town by producing a propaganda film. Living in a local teacher’s house, they begin to experience their victims’ lives through disturbing dreams. As reality collapses, both men are forced to confront their complicity in the violence – and make a choice that will define who they are.

SHORT RIGA Test Screenings will host closed screenings of short films, followed by feedback from an international panel of experts, with recommendations on completing the films and developing their festival strategies.

Four short films will be presented: Naples, Florida, Last Curonian Cow, Tears of Stardust and the Lithuanian co-production Nesting.

Naples, Florida, directed by Modesta Žemgulytė and produced by Akvilė Žilionytė-Khan of Artišokai, tells the filmmaker’s personal story.

In 1997, her family moves to Naples, Florida, in pursuit of a better life. Home videos recorded between 1997 and 1999 reveal their hopes and daily challenges. After years of exhausting work, her mother experiences a psychotic episode, prompting the family’s return to Lithuania, where she is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Decades later, nearing the age her mother was at the time, Žemgulytė returns to the family archives and speaks with her mother, seeking to understand the past and come to terms with it.

In Dovydas Drakšas’s short Last Curonian Cow, produced by Greta Akcijonaitė, Ramojus Petrauskas and Aurimas Pukevičius of Magic Film, the summer season is drawing to a close. As tourists on the Curonian Spit catch the last rays of sunshine, Juzė, the only cow left there, sets out on a final journey through a landscape that no longer has a place for her.

The animated film Tears of Stardust, directed by Vilma Razmutė and produced by Giedrė Burokaitė of Akis bado, takes viewers to a futuristic city. During a group therapy session, a young woman tests a head-worn device that gives her access to a heightened reality where the conscious and subconscious merge. As her journey is broadcast to the group, a dark figure from her mind begins to follow her.

Nesting, a Latvian-Estonian-Lithuanian animated co-production directed by Anna Zača and co-produced by Justė Michailinaitė of Broom Films, follows a couple whose comforting shared routines begin to unravel when they decide to have a baby. A growing cot gradually swallows their apartment, while the man struggles to fully understand the changes his partner experiences during pregnancy.

Two Lithuanian production companies, Akis bado and Art Shot, will present their latest projects at the Baltic Animation Meet-Up. Meanwhile, Rimantė Daugėlaitė-Cegelskienė, head of the Lithuanian Shorts, will introduce the Vilnius Short Film Festival at Meet the Festivals.

The Riga International Film Festival takes place on 15–25 October, with RIGA IFF FORUM running on 22–25 October.

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