10-06-2019

RIGA IFF Starts the EARLY BIRD Ticket Sales and Announces the First Films

    On 29 May, the EARLY BIRD ticket sales start for the Riga International Film Festival (RIGA IFF) that will take place from October 17 to 27. This limited offer of one hundred exclusive ten-ticket packs is valid for all festival screenings! 

    Feature films, documentaries and short films from all over the world will be shown in more than 100 screenings of the RIGA IFF competition and themed sections. 

    FESTIVAL SELECTION, a section of outstanding new discoveries, showcases films that have thrilled the audiences of prominent international film festivals. RIGA IFF can now reveal three of them! Sorry, We Missed You (2019) by the British social drama master Ken Loach, nominated for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, will touch a cord with those shaken by the dark side of globalization. The self-ironic Non-Fiction (Doubles vies, 2018) by the French director and screenwriter Olivier Assayas, one of the contenders for the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival, makes us smile about the twists and turns of careers and love lives of contemporary high society as well as problems and hopes brought by universal digitalization. Probably, the most unexpected surprise will be the partially autobiographical tragicomedy Synonyms(Synonymes, 2019) by the Israeli director Nadav Lapid, telling a story about the ability and disability to break free from one’s national identity. The film received the Golden Bear of the Berlin Film Festival and the prize of the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI). 

    The focus of the retrospective and research will be on cinema and technologies this year. Therefore, futuristic visions of several different film classics will vibrate on the big screen in the section IN TECHNO VERITAS. Namely, the message of aliens to the mankind shot during the Cold War Era The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) by Robert Wise, the iconic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, the techno-surreal provocation with violence and brainwashing Videodrome (1983) by the innovator of forms and languages David Paul Cronenberg and the politically satiric Orwellian dystopia Brazil (1985) by Terry Gilliam. 

    More on other festival film sections, competitions and special ticket packs – 10 tickets for 40€ on the RIGA IFF website rigaiff.lv

    We welcome you to see the RIGA IFF 2019 announcement video, revealing both the identity of this year and the films to be screened during the festival. Watch here!

    This will be the sixth instalment of the Riga International Film Festival. The audience reached more than 22,000 people last year. This year, RIGA IFF will take place from October 17 to 27 in film theatres Splendid Palace, KSuns, Kino Bize as well as the Latvian National Library and Kaņepe Culture Centre. More than 100 screenings in 11 film sections will run along with lectures, discussions and other events gathering hundreds of international film professionals in Riga. 

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