The 2nd International Documentary Film Festival Artdocfest/Riga starts this Thursday, March 3rd. As a sign of solidarity with Ukrainian colleagues and the people of Ukraine, the festival program includes a special selection of documentaries dedicated to Ukraine and telling about events since 2014.
The program dedicated to Ukraine includes 5 films. Directed by Iryna Tsilyk, The Earth is Blue as an Orange (2020) tells about the efforts of a single mother and her four children living in the frontline zone of Donbass to preserve humanity by making a film about their life during the war. The film received a special award at the Artdocfest/Riga festival last year and won awards at many international festivals. The film Ukrainian Sheriffs (2016), directed by Roman Bondarchuk and co-produced by the Latvian film studio VFS Film, is a look at the recent history of Ukraine through the life of a small southern village. The program also includes the film Rodnye (Close relations) (2016) by Ukrainian-born director Vitaly Mansky. His family still lives there, and as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, its members had to make a choice, as a result of which some of them became implacable enemies. The film directed by Alisa Kovalenko Alisa in Warland (2015) is a very personal story about the director's trip to the east of Ukraine at the beginning of the war, getting into hot front points and being captured by separatists. In turn, the film by Danish director Simon Lereng Wilmont The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017) touches on the theme of war and children and tells about the life of 10-year-old Oleg in eastern Ukraine, in the war zone.
The two competition programs of Artdocfest/Riga “Baltic Focus” and “Artdocfest” also include the Ukrainian-Latvian film This Rain Will Never Stop, in which the young Ukrainian director Alina Gorlova makes a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace.
“We were waiting for Alina in Riga, at the Latvian premiere of the film. Instead, she is now in Kyiv, experiencing the horrors of the Russian invasion and sleeping in a bomb shelter. The circle of active documentarians is relatively small, we are all well acquainted with each other, and what our friends and colleagues in Ukraine are now experiencing is incomprehensible and touches us very personally. That is why we decided to include films dedicated to Ukraine in the festival, and donate the proceeds, in cooperation with Lithuanian co-producers, to the heroes of the film The Earth is Blue as an Orange," says festival producer Ieva Ubele about the decision made by the festival team.
Screenings of the Artdocfest/Riga festival will traditionally be held at the Splendid Palace cinema. Movie tickets can be purchased at the cinema box office or on the website www.splendidpalace.lv. The screenings will be organized in the "green mode" (upon presentation of a document certifying the fact of vaccination or previous Covid-19 disease).
The full program and detailed information about Artdocfest/Riga can be found here.
The international festival Artdocfest/Riga is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and many international foundations. The partners of the festival are the American TV channel Current Time TV, the German TV channel Deutsche Welle and the cinema Splendid Palace.