Inspiration Forum - searching for new topics in documentary cinema 

The 23rd Ji.hlava IDFF will again offer a unique experience, which is not common at film festivals around the world. Next to over 1,100 arriving film professionals, the festival this year will be attended by over 100 personalities from all walks of life outside the film realm. 

Scientists, politicians, artists, social reformers, and journalists will take part in a full six-days programme of the Inspiration Forum, to discuss the complex problems of today's world with documentary filmmakers and the public attending the Ji.hlava IDFF.

Selection of guests of the Inspiration Forum 2019

Fawzia Koofi / Afghanistan 

Afghan politician and author. Outspoken advocate for the rights of women, children and democracy. Head of the Parliament’s Women Affairs Commission and former candidate for the President of Afghanistan.

Friday, October 25, 12PM–2PM 

 

Jonathan Ledgard / United Kingdom

Creator of the concept of cargo drones and droneports in Africa. His novel Submergence was named Book of the Year by the New York Times. He explores the relationship between artificial intelligence and nature. 

Monday, October 28, 2:30PM - 4PM

 

Karolína Koubová / Czech Republic

Trainer of aerial silks and aerial acrobatics, former curator of Jihlava’s DIOD theatre. Leader of the local political organisation Fórum Jihlava and since 2018 the mayor of the city.

Friday, October 25, 2:30PM - 4PM

 

Christian Weissgerber / Germany

A leading figure of the German militant Neo-Nazi scene until 2010, when he dropped out and deradicalized. Since then he is working in the line of prevention and elucidation of racist and nationalistic politics at schools and universities.

Monday, October 28, 2:30PM - 4PM

 

Sophie Howe / Wales

The Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. Her role is to act as a guardian of interests of future generations in Wales and general public well-being. The world’s first future generations’ representative with statutory powers.

Saturday, October 26, 12PM - 2PM

 

Francisco Cantú / USA

Former US border patrol agent, essayist and author of the book The Line Becomes a River in which he reflects on his experience of patrolling the US-Mexican border. Recipient of the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Monday, October 28, 4:30PM - 6PM

 

Isabella Salton / Brazil

Executive director of Instituto Terra, a community non-profit environmental NGO, which has been over 20 years restoring the vast and devastated areas of the Atlantic Forest and its ecosystem.

Sunday, October 27, 4:30PM - 6PM

 

Bill McKibben / USA

American author and environmentalist. Founder of 350.org, the first planetwide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized more than 20,000 rallies around the world.

Sunday, October 27, 12PM - 2PM

 

You can look forward to over 30 lectures, discussions and presentations, which will take place at Jihlava's Horácké Theatre on October 24–29. Each of the six days of the Inspiration Forum will be dedicated to one topic and their titles are the following: God & Co. / Woman in Change / Re:democracy /  Climategeddon / How Not To Be Afraid? / Made in China.

Read the full programme and profiles of the Inspiration Forum guests here. The Inspiration Forum is accessible to holders of any type of accreditation for the 23rd Ji.hlava IDFF.  

Applications are now welcome for the 14th FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project – a training programme for young critics and film journalists from Central and Eastern Europe coordinated by the Warsaw Film Foundation in a partnership with International Federation of Film Critics. The Workshop will be held during the 35th Warsaw Film Festival between 11 and 20 October 2019. A group of young critics will be invited to the festival and have a unique opportunity to take part in one of the most prestigious film events in the region and meeting high-profile film professionals. Under the guidance of tutors, participants will be covering the festival and industry events, delivering film reviews and conducting interviews with directors and filmmakers. They will be encouraged to use their own initiative and will receive constructive, positive feedback about their work. 

Warsaw Critics Project is devised and coordinated by British film journalist Amber Wilkinson and Italian critic Tommaso Tocci. 

Amber Wilkinson is a journalist with more than 20 years experience. She is the co-founder and editorial director of UK-based website Eye For Film. Her byline has appeared in The Times, Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald and Filmmaker Magazine among others. She also contributes as a freelance film critic on BBC Radio Scotland. She has run several FIPRESCI young critics' workshops and mentored student critics at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2018 and 2019. 

Tommaso Tocci has so far contributed to various publications on cinema, including Indiewire, RogerEbert.com, CinemaScope, Filmkrant and Ioncinema. 

Workshops are designed for critics under the age of 30 with proficient skills in written and spoken English. All participants are granted with shared travel and accommodation grants. 

Selected works of the participants will be published on FIPRESCI, Ioncinema and Film New Europe websites. 

Previous participants have gone on to contribute to major international film publications like Screen International, Indiewire, The Hollywood Reporter, Cineuropa and Film New Europe. 

Please send your application including CV, self-introduction, and three samples of your published work in English, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Deadline: 30 September 2019. 

The Riga International Film Festival, which will be held from October 17 to 27, will feature the national premieres of several Latvian films that have already received acclaim at other international film festivals, including "Immortal", which received the Grand Prix at Karlovy Vary, and Laila Pakalniņa's black and white film "Spoon". Kārlis Lesiņš' drama on depression – “The Despair”, with Kaspars Zāle in the lead role – will also be shown on the big screen for the first time, as will the Latvian-German co-production “The Birth of the Leopard”, a documentary about a legendary love story linking the Latvian town of Stāmeriene with Sicily.

National film premieres at RIGA IFF provide the opportunity for a growing number of respected film professionals from around the world to see the latest Latvian films and their premieres on the big screen right here in Riga. A premiere of a Latvian film is always a special event for the festival as it creates a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge national cinema and participate in celebrating the achievement. Sometimes a film makes its national premiere after it has already been screened for competitions at prominent foreign film festivals, which is the case this year with “Away” and “Spoon”; at other times, it is local audiences who will first see the film on the big screen, as it is this year with Kārlis Lesiņš’ “The Despair” and Emīls Alps’ “Choir. Conductor. Kamēr…”. RIGA IFF also invites audience to celebrate Latvian cinema.

On October 19, the film “The Despair” – award-winning director Kārlis Lesiņš’ feature-length debut featuring Kaspars Zāle, Alise Danovska, Līga Zeļģe and Vita Vārpiņa – will see its premier. The film is about Gatis, a freelancer who is struggling with depression and the modern-day affliction of burnout. He goes to his childhood home to rest, recover and clear out his mind, but accidentally ends up in a strange, cult-like therapy group that appears to aid the healing process, yet also uncovers the dark corners of Gatis’ subconsciousness as he comes to face childhood traumas and ghosts from the past. Going back home becomes a tough psychological struggle with both one’s self and one’s past. Kārlis Lesiņš, the film’s director and screenwriter, admits that this is a very personal and painful subject for him. ‘Yes, I have gone through something similar myself. I wanted to tell others about it because I know that I am not the only one – many will identify with the subject,’ reveals the director, who is a veteran recipient of two ‘Lielais Kristaps’ National Film Awards.

A significant page of European history directly related to Latvia will be opened by the Latvian-German co-production “The Birth of the Leopard”, which will be coming to Riga immediately after its world premiere at the Hamburg Film Festival. The protagonist of the film is Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, known worldwide for authoring the Italian best-selling novel The Leopard. (The 1963 screen version directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon received the Grand Prix at Cannes and is considered a masterpiece.) Legend has it that Tomasi wrote part of the novel in Latvia while visiting his Baltic-German wife, Alexandra von Wolff-Stomersee, at Stāmeriena Castle. The film is laid out as the recounting of relationships; it is about an unusual love, about friendship through years of hardship, banishment and loss, and about the determination to not lose oneself during times of great change and to constantly rediscover oneself. The film’s score is by Kārlis Auzāns and features actresses Karīna Tatarinova and Sarmīte Vucāne. With costume design by Berta Vilipsone, the film was produced by Gints Grūbe and Elīna Gediņa-Ducena.

At RIGA IFF audiences will be able to finally see “Immortal”, the Estonian-Latvian documentary film that received the Grand Prix at Karlovy Vary. The film allows viewers to see a different angle of how a Russian citizen is ‘produced’. The film’s director, Ksenia Okhapkina, went with a film crew to northern Russia to a former gulag where political prisoners and deportees were once imprisoned. The film uncovers the mechanism that encourages people to voluntarily deny their personal individuality and become a serviceable resource of the state. The ultimate goal of these people is to give their lives to the ‘Motherland’, thereby achieving immortality. ‘This is a film about people who have been brought up by propaganda,’ says Okhapkina. ‘Having made this film, I have a better understanding of what is happening in Russia – why people support a government and political system that work against them and their children.’ The screenplay was co-authored by Pauls Bankovskis, who spent a lot of time in conversation with the film’s director.

The second film to have made its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival but its Latvian premier as part of the RIGA IFF Feature Film Competition programme is Laila Pakalniņa's documentary “Spoon”. The film follows the lengthy life-cycle of a simple plastic spoon – from black crude oil to a white spoon, the life purpose of which is exactly one meal. The film was made in black and white because as the director says: crude oil is black and the spoon is white. This currently very relevant ecological theme of illustrating the absurdity of modern consumer society – produce, use, throw away – has been packaged in artistic high-quality form by cameraman Gints Bērziņš, a co-author of nearly twenty of Pakalniņa’s films. Unlike many of Pakalniņa's films which are usually shot only in Latvia, the geographical scope behind “Spoon” is very broad – material for the film was also sourced from Lithuania, Norway, China, Hong Kong and Azerbaijan; the film is a co-production of Latvia, Lithuania and Norway.

Emīls Alps’ documentary “Choir. Conductor. Kamēr…” tells the story of the famous youth choir's journey journey to the Tolosa Choral Competition, at which the grand prize must be won to qualify for the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing. The film’s director had the opportunity to capture moments that are usually hidden from outsiders. Created by a choir member, the film offers unprecedented insight into the singers' passion for music and the overcoming of difficulties.

Several short films by Latvian filmmakers will see their national premieres as part of the RIGA IFF programme SHORT RIGA.

Over eleven days, the Riga International Film Festival, which will take place from October 17 to 27, will screen 148 films within eleven thematic programmes and competitions. The full festival schedule and tickets to all screenings can be obtained at the festival’s website: rigaiff.lv.

RIGA IFF is supported by the Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, the National Film Centre, Live Riga, and the Riga City Council.  

This year, for the sixth instalment of the Riga International Film Festival all industry events will be gathered under the name RIGA IFF FORUM. By taking a look into the festivals guest list, one can feel captivated – FORUM will welcome board members of the European Film Academy, Baltic animation industry experts, and virtual reality enthusiasts. It will serve as a platform for foreign guests of the festival and Latvian film professionals to meet and exchange their experiences and ideas.

The first weekend of the festival is planned to be extraordinarily splendid, starting with film screenings and continuing with virtual reality hackathon and discussions about the current developments in Baltics' animation industry.

Virtual reality is a rapidly growing audiovisual medium that expands the possibilities and boundaries of cinematic language, for these matters festival once again has teamed up with the interactive production house Story Hub, to host the second edition of RIGA IFF GOES VR, which will include inspirational lectures and Magnetic Latvia hackathon.

In the meantime, taking place from October 18 to 19,  BALTIC ANIMATION MEET-UP will be held, including animation studio and individual filmmaker portfolio presentations, as well as panel discussions on the acute issues currently confronting the animation industry in the Baltics.

Not to mention that this year RIGA IFF has the honour of hosting the European Film Academy Board Members for their annual board meeting. Some of EFA’s members, including the director Agnieszka Holland, will also participate in MAGNETIC LATVIA FILM CONFERENCE lectures and discussions. The conference hosted by Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) will be dedicated to film market development in Northern Europe. The first day of the conference and the arrival of EFA Board Members will be celebrated at RIGA IFF FORUM NETWORKING EVENT, where international guests and Latvian film industry professionals will have an opportunity to get acquainted.

The RIGA IFF FORUM Baltic short film presentations for experts will take place on 24th and 25th of October. SHORT RIGA: TEST SCREENINGS are closed screenings of short films by Baltic directors, after which an international panel of experts provide evaluation and recommendations. In addition to Test Screenings, the SHORT RIGA guests and Baltic artists who are working in short moving image format will be invited to SHORT RIGA: WHAT'S UP? –  an informal event with no protocol and only one rule: 5 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for questions.

More information about each event and registrations: forum.rigaiff.lv