March 12-14, 2026.
Riga
Splendid Palace cinema, National Film School, etc.

The new festival is being created on the initiative of LAC Rector Dāvis Sīmanis to simultaneously provide Latvian film students with professional film screening and festival experience, promote collaboration among Baltic and Nordic film students and professors, and to promote the Latvian Academy of Culture and the National Film School abroad.

The festival will bring film students and cinema industry enthusiasts to the Splendid Palace cinema for masterclasses, where Anna Hints and Vytautas Katkus will share their short film-making experience, student short film screenings, and a retrospective screening of Baltic cinema masters works from their study period. The festival will also feature an entertaining "underground" screening, networking events, and, of course, the awarding of the best short film authors!

The creative director in 2026 will be director and producer Jānis Ābele:
Although the European film festival space is crowded with short film festivals, there are very few festivals specifically aimed at students. Existing student film festivals (with rare exceptions) are mainly local at the level of a specific country. Therefore, this initiative has the potential to become a significant film event not only in Latvia but also in the Northern European film student community.
The festival would also be an opportunity for young film professionals, who will soon enter the real film environment with all its challenges, to find future collaboration partners for their work. In other words, working together not just initiated by producers and co-production projects (as often happens in Europe nowadays), but because they have found creative common ground among themselves already during their studies.

For additional information about the festival program, follow the social networks of the National Film School and the Latvian Academy of Culture!