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.
It’s not the dog. A dark, starkly funny story of a single dog and the many different people she touches over her short lifetime. Man’s best friend starts out teaching a young boy some contorted life lessons before being taken in by a compassionate vet tech named Dawn Wiener. Dawn reunites with someone from her past and sets off on a road trip. After leaving Dawn, Wiener-Dog encounters a floundering film professor, as well as an embittered elderly woman and her needy granddaughter – all longing for something more. Solondz’s perversely dark comedy offers an appallingly honest look at the American experience, brought to life by its allstar cast.
Finnish writer-director continues his trilogy on refugees, which started with the award-winning tragicomedy Le Havre (2011). It is dedicated to film historian Peter von Bagh, the director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival, which the Kaurismäki brothers founded in 1986. When the authorities decline his claim for refugee status and make a decision to return the Syrian Khaled (Sherwan Haji) to the ruins of Aleppo, he decides to stay illegally in the country and disappears into the streets of Helsinki. There he meets, besides various types of racism, also pure kindness. A Finn Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) finds him in the inner yard of his restaurant. For a moment life shows its sunnier side, but fate soon intervenes…
Super-objective dashboardcam videos grow into a strong image of Russian national character with its permanent awaiting for the miracle and habitual approach to real dramas. Everything can happen on Russian roads. Everything can happen on the road of life. If you like car crash compilations and Russians with foul mouths, you will love this fascinating mosaic of asphalt adventures and landscape photography, in which video footage from a variety of dashboard cameras presents the absurd and frightening nature of Russia. Alongside a series of bizarre car accidents on the country’s roads, the dashboard cameras also capture other spectacles through the windshield, such as a hysterical wedding guest, a confused man and a horse-drawn sleigh. More than once, angry motorists brandish axes, pistols or sledgehammers at the camera, and at times the camera itself seems to come to life, when it is chucked out of the car or stolen by someone breaking in. The footage of spectacular trips through a forest fire, tall snowdrifts or flooded streets is almost poetic – and what’s that up there in the sky? Is it a plane crashing, or could it be a comet? Bemused commentary from unseen drivers and passengers or the sound of the car radio provides unintentionally comical moments. Would someone please call 911?
