RIFF Starts on 28 August

The first Rijeka Film Forum – RIFF, organised by Art-kino as part of Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture's flagship named Times of Power, will be held from 28 August to 2 September at Art-kino.  

The rich six-day film programme of Rijeka Film Forum starts with the regional premiere of the award-winning documentary For Sama by Syrian activist and journalist Waad Al-Kateab and British director Edward Watts. Named the most nominated documentary in BAFTA history, For Sama follows the shocking experience of war through the eyes of a woman, narrated as a love letter from a mother to her daughter Sama.           

Numerous film awards include The Golden Eye, the best documentary film award from the Cannes Film Festival, BAFTA Award in the Best Documentary category, the Main Award at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival and Audience Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Moreover, For Sama was nominated for BAFTA Award in the Best Film Not in the English Language category and is the holder of the prestigious Oscar nomination for the Best Documentary Feature in 2020.

The grand opening of Rijeka Film Forum, the regional premiere of For Sama, will be held on 28 August at 21:00 at the Summer Art-kino, in collaboration with ZagrebDox – International Documentary Film Festival. 

In addition to the documentary of the year For Sama, the film programme of Rijeka Film Forum brings twelve more feature and documentary films from all over the world, that will have their Croatian premieres mostly at Art-kino. Guided by the principles of originality, dynamics, recentness and radicalism, RIFF's selection seeks to create a strong foundation for joint discussion and questioning, therefore the forum nature of the new film event in Rijeka will be complemented with relevant conversations and encounters, in and around the cinema.  

The new format of the originally planned Rijeka Film Festival, postponed in March, is the result of Art-kino's desire to offer to the Times of Power flagship - inspired and dedicated to questioning different forms and relations of power, a film form and content in which Rijeka audience has not yet had the opportunity to participate. The entire RIFF programme is held around the cinema, a safe and well-known base for organisers and visitors, a unique meeting place for film and words, that, in its basic meaning, a film forum implies.

With a departure from the competitive character and numerous (planned in the original festival edition) accompanying content, Rijeka Film Forum emphasizes solidarity, openness and collaboration, together with the question that is essentially the most important - what can films offer to its viewers?  

More information about the Rijeka Film Forum can be found on the official website www.riff.hr, on Art-kino website www.art-kino.org and on the accompanying social networks.