In 2023, the Artdocfest/Riga festival transformed its traditional pitching for finding industrial partners for documentary projects into a competition for the distribution of direct assistance in the creation of documentaries by independent authors from the countries of the former Soviet bloc and Eastern Europe.
In 2024, 119 applications were sent to the competition. Of these, 12 applications were selected for the final session. In 2025, there were 105 applications and 11 projects reached the final.
Based on the results of the presentation, by decision of the expert group, the finalist projects will provided with grant support.
Funds for support are allocated by the Artdocfest Foundation, specially created for these purposes.
Some of the contestants took advantage of the right to speak under pseudonyms and release only limited information about their project into the public domain.
For the full list of finalists, click here>>>
Jury: Guntis Trekteris - offline / Marianna Kaat - online / Alina Rudnitskaya - offline / Filip Remunda - online / Vitaly Mansky - offline.
Winners - 2025
We thank all the participants who submitted their projects to the pitching. Unfortunately, we cannot support every project, but we sincerely wish the authors success on their path to the audience.
The finalists of the pitching are 10 projects, from which the jury, through voting, selected 5 winners.
So, the Artdocfest 2025 pitching winners are:
- "The View from a Shattered Window", directed by Alisa Reimer
- "His scars make me ugly", directed by Svitlana Liščinska
- "The Last Summer In The Palace", directed by Teja Spektora
- "Silence", directed by Asya Veselova
- "Have a safe trip", directed by Sofiia Atamanova
These projects will receive financial and organizational support.