On Thursday, February 6, the first Baltic Film Days will kick off in the Paris with the screenings of the latest films from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - six feature-length films and three short film programmes.
A new festival, CinéBaltique - Baltic Film Days, is being established in the capital of France with the cooperation of the Baltic embassies in France and the national film institutions of the three countries.This year, the festival will take place from February 6 – 9 at the L'Arlequin cinema in Paris, offering the Parisian public the opportunity to discover a selection of bold and innovative films that demonstrate the vitality and originality of the Baltic film industry. A total of 25 films have been selected for the programme, including six feature-length films, two from each country. Latvia is represented in the feature-length programme by Juris Kursietis' latest feature The Exalted (2024) and the legendary golden classic Four White Shirts (1967) by Rolands Kalniņš, which will be screened with an introduction by film scholar and head of the National Film Centre of Latvia Dita Rietuma.
19 films will be screened in three short film programmes, Latvia is represented by six short films. Three of them are animation films, thus confirming the strong professionalism of Latvian authors in this art form: the programme includes Edmunds Jansons' film Freeride in C (2024), through which the author defended his PhD thesis; Zane Oborenko's sand animation Kafka. In Love (2024) and In the End (2023) by Linda Stūre. The Latvian selection also includes two feature shorts - Resistance is Futile (2023) by Armands Začs and North Pole (2024) by Robert Vanags - and one documentary short, Ksenia (2023) by Renāte Saulīte.
After the screenings, there will be Q&As with the filmmakers.
CinéBaltique is organised by the National Film Centre of Latvia, Estonian Film Institute, Lithuanian Film Centre and the Embassies of the Baltic States in France, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia.