This year at the “Berlin International Film Festival”, Latvian actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots has been selected for the young talent program "Shooting Stars", the documentary "Time to the Target” from the director Vitaly Mansky will have its world premiere in the section "Berlinale Forum" and other Latvian film industry professionals will attend European Film Market (EFM).
Berlin Film Festival will take place from February 13 to February 23, it is one of the largest, most significant and most tradition-rich A-class film festivals in the world; along with the Cannes and Venice festivals, Berlinale is considered one of the three main forums of the European Film Year. This year, to mark the anniversary of the festival, a 20 EUR coin with a traditional Berlinale bear and the inscription "Berlinale 75" will be released in Germany.
For the 28th time, the Berlinale will host the European Shooting Stars programme events for four days – an opportunity for young and promising film actors to gain the attention of world film professionals and gain new knowledge and contacts at specially organized events, to meet representatives of international media, agents and producers. This talent selection includes ten young actors from different European countries, including Latvian actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots, who has already been recognized twice in a row as the best film actor of the year in Latvia, receiving the Lielais Kristaps Awards for his main roles in feature film January (2022) by Viesturs Kairišs and mini-series Soviet Jeans (2024) by Staņislavs Tokalovs and Juris Kursietis. "There are actors who come into the frame with a special charisma, and Kārlis Arnolds Avots is one of them," the European Shooting Stars jury said, justifying the inclusion of the Latvian actor in the European selection of promising talents. This time, the European Shooting Stars national team is a rare occasion when young actors from all three Baltic states have been selected for it at the same time – Lithuania will be represented in Berlinale by Šarūnas Zenkevičius, and Estonia by Maarja Johanna Mägi, known to Latvian film-goers for her role in the Latvian-Estonian co-production film Apothecary Melchior. The European Shooting Stars event is culminated in a ceremony on 17 February at the Berlinale Palast, where each participant will receive their own European star award.
The Berlin Festival program is selected from several thousand films submitted, and director Vitaly Mansky's documentary Time to the Target, with the international name is in Ukrainian – Chas pidlotu, has been selected for the Berlinale section Forum this year. This is already the third documentary film shot by Latvian director Vitaly Mansky in the three years since hostilities took place in his native Ukraine, and this film most directly dedicated to his hometown of Lviv, where the war has brought almost invisible, yet radical, changes in the daily lives of civilians.
In parallel with the film festival, Berlin also hosts one of Europe's most important forums for the film industry – the European Film Market / European Film Market (February 13 - 19), which allows film industry professionals to develop international cooperation, build co-production structures and look for partners for new and emerging projects; Within the framework of the European Film Market, screenings of the Latvian film market are also planned for potential distributors, festival curators, representatives of streaming platforms and TV channels.
In the European Film Market, next to the Lithuanian and Estonian stands, there will be a Latvian stand, which will be staffed by representatives of the National Film Centre of Latvia and the Latvian Film Producers Association, it is located in the main venue of the film market Gropius Bau. The National Film Centre of Latvia has prepared the statistical publication Facts & Figures with the latest data on film screening in all three Baltic states for the Latvian stand for use in person and online, and a jointly created attractive magazine Baltic Film will also be available at the stand, the content of which has been prepared in all three countries, emphasizing the most current processes and phenomena for each film industry.