RIGA: Songs of the Slow Burning Earth by Olha Zhurba received the main award in the Feature Film Competition at the 11th Riga International Film Festival (17 – 27 October 2024). A Special Mention in the same section went to the Lithuanian/Latvian coproduction Drowning Dry by Laurynas Bareisa.

RIGA: Māris Maskalāns, one of the greatest documentary observers of nature in the Baltics, has completed a documentary that explores the inevitable fate of everything that lives or has ever lived. The End / Beigas has its world premiere in the International Competition of the Riga International Film Festival (17-27 October 2024).

RIGA: Acclaimed Latvian director Laila Pakalniņa's new documentary Termini / Galapunkti will have its world premiere in the International Competition of the Riga International Film Festival (17 - 27 October 2024). The film is an observational poem of the rhythm created by vehicles and passengers at terminal points of the public transport in Riga.

RIGA: Latvian film director Uģis Olte continues his venture into soundscapes and wilderness, and his new music film TESA MAN will have its world premiere as the opening film of the 11th Riga International Film Festival (17-27 October 2024).

RIGA: Under a new mechanism, which is waiting for the Parliament’s approval, Latvia will introduce a 30% eligible funding support for the film industry and foreign film projects in 2025, for which it will allocate 7.5 m EUR.

RIGA: Agnese Lāce is the new Minister of Culture in Latvia, as the previous Minister of Culture Agnese Logina, who had taken office on 15 September 2023, stepped down on 17 June 2024.

RIGA: The National Film Centre of Latvia has distributed 1,800,158 EUR for annual production grants in 2024. The list includes a total of 14 films: six feature films, six documentaries and two animated short films. The grants were announced on 15 April 2024.

RIGA: The Latvian historical drama Soviet Milk directed by Ināra Kolmane and produced by DEVIŅI took the seventh place in the domestic Top Ten of 2023 with 55,873 admissions and 267,939 EUR gross.

RIGA: Elza Gauja’s love story about two senior postal workers A Postcard from Rome / Pastkarte no Romas received the main award at the Latvian National Film Awards Lielais Kristaps. The most awards, five, went to film director Stanislavs Tokalovs’ work.

RIGA: Nine projects that received support from the National Film Centre of Latvia through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in 2022 are expected to be finished by the end of 2023.