KIDS
WEEKEND
GREAT CINEMA FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY
Latvia is a small country. And this is just the fourth year that a festival of such international significance takes place in Riga. We need new and young people to fall in love with the beautiful world of cinema! This is an honest answer as to why it is so important to have a whole weekend dedicated to films for the whole family, why it is important to provide additional captivating pastimes as well… Two fascinating days of a cinematic adventure for schoolchildren, pre-school kids and their kin.
The film is based on the life story of Melānija Vanaga, a woman who managed to survive her deportation to Siberia. It is a truthful account of the magnitude of the human spirit and the painful destinies, which were a part of the greatest tragedy facing the nation. It is the story of Latvian women who had to suffer and survive physically and emotionally in order for Latvia to live. To maintain hope, to preserve a person who is stronger than famine, cold, cruelty and even death and is capable of taking on responsibility for another person, to help others – such is the confirmation of Melānija Vanaga, her memories and also this film to the light in the world.
On the first day of the festival VFS Films will premiere a documentary project that took years in the making. At the centre of it all – a Latvian architect and a Chinese mountain miner. The process – an ambitious structure in the “centre of the World” – the Sacred Songshan mountain in the Henan province of China. Cultures differ, traditional assumptions and conventions need to be reassessed, personal ambitions become two sides of the same coin. Quanqi Zhu wants to bring the West into China, Austris Mailītis deeply values Eastern philosophy, and Shaolin monks fly in the air in the world’s first building constructed for probably the most fundamental of human ambitions – levitation.
