Latvia at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

On Tuesday, 6 July, the world-famous Cannes Film Festival begins in France, with Latvia actively participating this year in various events and programmes of the film industry, as well as in the film market.

Due to the pandemic, the Cannes Film Festival has undergone considerable changes – after 2020, when the festival was not held in person at all, but only announced the programme of films selected for the competition and organised the film market Marché du Film online in June, the traditional May dates were not used this year either. However, from 6 to 17 July, the festival is taking place in person, with online elements, and a Latvian delegation is also attending.

As has now become traditional, Latvia’s pavilion will operate at the festival, staffed by representatives of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA), the National Film Centre and the Association of Latvian Film Producers. Specifically for the Cannes film market, the NFC has compiled and published the latest catalogue of Latvian films and films in development, Films from Latvia 2020-2023, and an overview of Latvia’s film industry, Latvian Film Industry 2021.

This year, Latvia’s participation in the Cannes Film Festival is closely linked to its neighbouring countries, Lithuania and Estonia, as the leading film institutions of the three Baltic states are cooperating ever more closely, following the principle that joining forces makes it possible to become more visible in the international industry arena. Therefore, on the Cannes film market’s Marché du Film Producers Network platform, which for 15 years has brought together more than 500 producers from around the world and has become an internationally significant platform for cooperation, all three countries are jointly making use of the opportunity to come into the spotlight (Producers under the Spotlight) – with two producers from each country. Latvia is represented in this selection of professional, active and promising producers by Aija Bērziņa (Tasse Film studio) and Gints Grūbe (Mistrus Media studio).

Meanwhile, at the Cannes film market’s Co-Production Day the selection of films in development from the Baltic Event section of the Tallinn Film Festival is participating for the first time, and Latvia is represented in this seven-project selection by director Dāvis Sīmanis and producer Gints Grūbe with the historical drama supported by the National Film Centre, Maria’s Silence – the story of the Latvian-born actress Maria Leiko (1887–1938), who became a prominent film star in Germany but met a tragic fate in the Soviet Union, swept away by the brutal wave of Stalinist repression (starring Inese Kučinska).

A collection of Baltic short films, Baltic Shorts, has also been created through cooperation among the three countries in the Cannes Film Festival section Cannes Court Métrage; four of the ten films were made in Latvia – the latest works by Vladimirs Leščovs, Edmunds Jansons, Helen Ora and Armands Začs will be shown internationally. The short films included in the selection will remain available online for another five months to programmers of film festivals around the world and film distributors.

Latvia will be represented at the Baltic virtual stand by a team from the Riga International Film Festival’s (Riga IFF) short-film programme Short Riga and the Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS, while on 15 July an invited presentation, Small Countries, Big Impacts: The Short Film Production ecosystem of the Baltics, will be shown to specially invited representatives of the global film industry. It will discuss short-film production mechanisms and co-production opportunities in Latvia.

More information - https://www.km.gov.lv/lv/jaunums/latvija-kannu-festivala-2021

Author:

Ministry of Culture

km.gov.lv