RIGA IFF īsfilmas: Eksistenciāli draudi

Name: RIGA IFF īsfilmas: Eksistenciāli draudi
Start: 2025-10-23
End: 2025-10-23
Location: Forum Cinemas

Th 23/10/2025 18:30

Forum Cinemas, Delfi LUX auditorija

6.00 - 7.00

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“Existential threat" – a term used, even overused, by democrats and dictators alike to describe any threat to the very existence of someone or something. It’s a concept. An ideal. You must therefore defend yourself by all means, the strongest and, hopefully, the most unexpected.

The threat always begins modestly, at your parents' dinner table, as in There’s Plenty of Fish in the Sea, when everyone comments on your life choices to deny who you are. In Big And Little Hands, the death of a child is symbolically the death of one village, and poetry and music are the only weapons against a collective sense of dread. In Easter Day, life in wartime Ukraine requires navigating the absurdity of the "new normal" (and remembering to feed your cat).

Faced with threats to the environment, saving a marsh means saving the world in The Water Was Here, while one threat to the marine ecosystem calls for desperate measures in Last Tropics. Finally, in order to defeat an artificial intelligence in The Diffusion Pilot, why not expose it to the throes of dementia?

Mykola Zasieiev
Easter Day
Пасхальний день
UA, FR
2025, 15’, uk
Age 12+
Natalia Libet, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Viktor Shevchenko, Victor Ede, 2Brave (UA), Cinephage (FR)

Men on the streets get chased by stares. Someone’s walking a chihuahua, someone’s out jogging, but everyone’s uneasy glances are fixed at Petro and Andriy — recruitment officers inspecting military documents, holiday or not. When the officers encounter the freelance IT guy, Sashko, the young man has two requests before he's taken away: that they stop by the store so he can buy food for his cat, and that he is allowed to bless his Easter bread.

War has become a disturbingly normal part of daily routine. Ukrainian director Zaseyev draws the viewer into a vignette-like scene where new army recruits are being drafted, offering a deeply human – even humorous – take on the situation in the spirit of a buddy film. Two mouthy colleagues and a young man in a cat T-shirt remind us not only of life at the front, Ukrainian culture and traditions, but also of all the lives you can’t take away with you in a backpack when you leave. Premiering at the RIGA IFF, this elegantly made short film captivates with its wit and genre fluidity.

As Qiu Yang, consultant of the RIGA IFF short film selection committee, puts it: “The film offers a different and difficult perspective that we don’t usually get to see. Nicely shot and simple, but effective and with an intention.”

Sophie Sherman, Némo Camus
the water was here
l'eau était là
BE
2025, 15’, fr
Age 12+
Stefanie Bodien, Gsara

Enclosed by a railway, a highway and WIELS contemporary art centre, lies a no-place – initially a construction site flooded by groundwater, later halted by the 2008 financial crisis, which paralysed the project. At the intersection of geological and financial forces, the marsh named after Wiels came into existence. This biotope is a green oasis in the middle of nowhere — merging the surreal with the natural, it has become a refuge for insects, birds and people alike.

A diary of a unique strip of land — a blend of home video and cinematic essay. As introduced by the Brussels-based director duo Sherman and Camus, the film explores “an ecosystem in the heart of the ruins of industrial capitalism”. Shot on 16mm film, this poetic work gives a nod to Tarkovsky’s Zone in Stalker (1979) and reflects on the fragile boundary between humans and nature – shaped not by reinforced concrete, but by the conditions of coexistence. As one of the film’s characters puts it: “Because when there’s an earthquake, animals — whether it’s a frog, a dog, a cat, anything, even a dragonfly — they can escape, but humans will stay.”

Thanasis Trouboukis
Last Tropics
Last Tropics
GR
2025, 20’, gr
Age 12+
Annabelle Aronis, Thanasis Trouboukis, Avion Films, ERT S.A., Greek Film Centre, Onassis Culture, Paraiso Production

A Mediterranean tale where water mirrors the red sky. An aquatic malady threatens a forgotten coastal village. With fish stocks dwindling and desperation growing, three young fishermen resort to a certain illegal fishing method. As their community falls into uncertainty and the crisis deepens, their radical choices drive them to flee — but will they escape the land, or the sea? Or perhaps everything?

Greek director Trouboukis, who blends documentary and fiction, succeeds in creating a sense of looming apocalypse — it begins in five minutes, and we are left to accept the status quo. By focusing on young protagonists who exploit nature and stir up bloodied waters, the director reflects on humanity’s failure to respond to ecological and climate crises. Doom, isolation and Faustian bargains push us ever further from our humanity, all set to a minimalistic, synth-pop-soaked score.

Joanna Szlembarska
There Is Plenty of Fish In The Sea
Wszystkie rybki śpią w jeziorze
PL
2025, 10’, pl
Age 16+
Anna Mroczek, Wojciech Leszczynski, Justyna Rucinska, Likaon

When will you get a boyfriend? Why won’t you eat meat? Why is it like this every year? Why are you always being interrogated about your private life and your weight? A young woman grows tired of the relentless questioning from her relatives. Thankfully, she’s not entirely alone — a loyal and supportive companion is always by her side. Just when she meets a potential partner and appears to be inching toward fulfilling her family’s expectations, a fateful twist shatters her reality.

A paper animation in the age of romantic fasting. Between personal well-being and societal expectations — this is the taut thread on which Szlembarska’s latest short film balances, served this time with a vegetarian twist. A graduate of the Łódź Film School, the filmmaker continues to refine her monochrome style, now turning her gaze to a woman’s role in her own life, where monogamy stands as the ideal, yet a little fish may be hiding somewhere between the two.

Aurelijus Čiupas
The Diffusion Pilot
The Diffusion Pilot
EE
2024, 7’, en
Age 12+
Lyza Jarvis, Estonian Academy of Arts

Cars — how many and what kind? POV shots – how many and from which angles? Colours — which ones and which one dominates? The machine must decide how to arrange, compare and sort images… and the images of those images. The author becomes a pilot, steering the film – his mode of transport into another world where an eternal movie is continuously being created. A world built on an infinite number of images, coming alive in the author’s room. Perhaps the apartment itself exists within this eternal film world? And who is truly in control of this narration?

Čiupas’ experimental essay is an elegant enigma of an image universe, where natural and artificial intelligence, ethics and technology, memory and narrative collide. What can and should be created by AI-generated animation based on diffusion models, when so many tools are on offer that choosing them all is impossible? Perhaps infinity itself should be recalculated. As the “pilot” of this endless loop exercise, premiering nationally at RIGA IFF, the Lithuanian prescribes “a kind of artificial dementia” to artificial intelligence.

Vajiko Chachkhiani
Big and Little Hands
Big and Little Hands
GE
2024, 25’, ka
Age 12+
Producers
Inna Margvelashvili, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Sakdoc Film, Fuga Film

A hot summer day in Tbilisi. The market is still closed, and the only living presence is the local dogs. With the break of day, truckloads of watermelons arrive, people begin to bustle, farmers haggle. Soon, a new shopping centre will take over this place — a building set to erase the life that still lingers here. As we follow people setting off into their day, through the shifting landscape and the call of mythical sirens, our gaze settles on a single fruit vendor who finds himself in a confrontation between life and death. One life equals one village — or perhaps, the entire country?

The work references the Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze and the closure of the historic market in Tbilisi following a government decision – the fate of the Deserters’ Bazaar became one of the causes of the 2024 protest. Visual artist and director Chachkhiani presents a myriad of living paintings, or tableaux vivant, depicting the fragility of the moment, capitalism, politics and its impact on society. The director masterfully constructs a narrative that feels authentic and documentary-like, yet deliberately crafted to linger in the mind like a timeless fable about the small and the great.

Event	Date / Time	Venue	Price
RIGA IFF īsfilmas: Eksistenciāli draudi	Th 23/10/2025 18:30	Forum Cinemas, Delfi LUX auditorija	6.00 - 7.00

Event	RIGA IFF īsfilmas: Eksistenciāli draudi
Date / Time	Th 23/10/2025 18:30
Venue	Forum Cinemas, Delfi LUX auditorija
Price	6.00 - 7.00

Good to know

Ticketing service fee 0.00 € (including VAT 21%) will be applied for each ticket.

NB! Please pay attention to the language information!

Age restriction: 16 y.o.
Original language: English, French, Greek, Georgian, Polish, Ukrainian
Subtitles: English
Simultaneous translation: none
Duration: 92 min
Location for the disabled in a wheelchair: yes

The ticket distributor only acts as an intermediary. If the event does not take place or is postponed, the event organizer, not the ticket distributor, assumes responsibility for the refund of the tickets purchased.

Venue

Forum Cinemas

13. janvāra iela 8 Rīga Latvia

www.forumcinemas.lv

Promoter