Bright Leaves

McElwee family legend has it that the Hollywood melodrama "Bright Leaf" starring Gary Cooper as a 19th century tobacco grower, is based on filmmaker Ross McElwee's great-grandfather, who created the Bull Durham brand.

Our special guest for the 11th Riga Pasaules Film Festival will be Ross McElwee, an internationally renowned American documentary filmmaker and Professor of the Practice of Filmmaking at Harvard University. We will have 4 film retrospective with the filmmaker present for Q&As led by Latvian filmmakers.

McElwee learnt documentary cinema at the beginning of the cinéma vérité epoch. His films tackle universal topics such as parenthood, family bonds and generational conflicts, existential questions about life and death, as well as love of moving image - a remedy to loss and death. In the background he tells stories of the American South haunted by the reminiscences of the civil war, Southern pride and conservatism.