FFDD26 Outlook: Discourse Europe Latvia

With our Discourse Europe series, we are opening our doors to Latvia this year. In two programmes, we encounter filmmaking that is as poetic as it is political, as idiosyncratic as it is experimental – and which is still far too rarely seen on the big screen in this country.

Together with guest curator Lauma Kaudzīte, programme director for short films at the Riga International Film Festival, we first immerse ourselves in current short film productions. Her selection shows how playfully young Latvian filmmakers today switch between documentary perspective and surreal fantasy. They tell stories of identity, love and memory – and of that fleeting beauty in everyday life that is often only discovered in the cinema.

The second programme, curated by Dr Elīna Reitere and Dr Claus Löser in collaboration with Sanita Grīna from the Latvian National Archives in Riga, builds a historical bridge and opens an almost forgotten treasure trove: films from amateur film circles of the late Soviet era, created beyond official cultural policy and often on the fringes of legality. These daring works explored new aesthetic territories and shifted the boundaries of what was possible in film.

With Discourse Europe: Latvia, we invite you to get to know a country anew through film – between the present and the past, between a poetic gaze and political history.