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.
As puberty approaches, they recognize the differences between body and mind.
German photographer and filmmaker Leni Kastell Leni talks about her memories in 1945.
So much more than a period piece. The debut feature by accomplished theater director William Oldroyd relocates Nikolai Leskov’s play Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District to Victorian England. Florence Pugh is forceful and complex as Lady Katherine, who enters into an arranged marriage with the domineering, repressed Alexander (Paul Hilton), and must contend with her husband’s even more unpleasant mine-owner father (Christopher Fairbank). In this constrictive new milieu, she finds carnal release with one of her husband’s servants (Cosmo Jarvis), but there are profound consequences to her infidelity. Boasting deft performances by an outstanding ensemble cast, Lady Macbeth is a rousing parable about the price of freedom.
An impressionistic portrait of an octogenarian Swedish woman. The Sweden of the 1930s, a Siberian labour camp, and contemporary Ukraine. By blending time and places – a narrative painting is created about a family love that only exist in memories. The main character Lida, her son and sister have lived through war, a war that they aren’t a part of, or involved in, but are, nonetheless, irreversibly affected by. Now they can only be connected to each other through their common memories and the distances between them seem to vanish. The film tells about the cycle of time and a community with a unique language – an old Swedish dialect – disappearing.
Sixty-year-old Pia is intellectually disabled and lives with her aging mother Guittou in a farmhouse on the Danish island of Langeland. She dreams of meeting a man. Pia does exercises and strolls along the beach; she reads books, visits a day centre in the city and looks after her goose Lola with tenderness. Her conversations with her mother focus on the future – how and where will Pia live once she dies? The days come and go. One day Pia meets Jens at the harbour. The two of them get talking and start spending time together… A fictional tale that is based on Pia’s real life and is embedded in her everyday routines.
An adult fairy tale. In mythology of mermaids, they are often portrayed as evil, wild, and predatory. Here the mermaid is a voracious but sensitive being who tries to follow the principles of the human world and loses her own identity. These mermaids do not wear seashell bras but rather chew on human hearts. A pair of mermaid sisters in an alternate 1980s Poland are drawn ashore to explore the wonders and temptations of life on land. Their tantalizing siren songs and otherworldly auras make them overnight sensations as nightclub singers. One sister falls for a human, and the siblings’ bond is tested as love and survival come into conflict…
Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first foreign rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea. Confronting strict ideology and cultural differences, the band struggles to get their songs through the needle’s eye of censorship before they can be unleashed on an audience never before exposed to alternative rock’n’roll. Meanwhile, propaganda loudspeakers are being set up at the border between the two Koreas and a countdown to war is announced. The hills are alive… with the sound of music!
“This is a film about my mother – movie actress Nina Antonova. About a hundred roles – big and small. She was recognized by the public, she was a celebrity. This is a very personal story. Funny and sad. About the diluted identity overshadowed by a man, her filmmaker-husband, my father… About my family where life and films were inseparable, and where those involved often mistook the alternate reality for real life. About dependency and newfoundfreedom…About the change of fate… About new roles, and new hopes…”
Oleg Karavaichuk, eccentric musical genius and famous composer, takes his final stroll through Komarovo, a bay-side summer community just outside St. Petersburg where he spent his whole life and wrote most of his works. His final piece, “The Komarovo Waltz”, unveiled here for the very first time, was written as a tribute to the place. The film is the reclusive composer’s farewell to audience as well as his last address and reminder of things that are truly important – love for your fellow man and virgin nature.
