What is a music video? We raise this question every year, and every year we discover something we never thought of before. However, the essence of the answer does not change: a music video is an audiovisual event that must be experienced together. Sometimes it can be a space for bold experiments, at other times the format can reach new technical peaks and redefine the possibilities of the genre. And then there are those videos that, although they use a familiar audiovisual language, manage to say something completely unexpected. In this festival section, we want to explore and get to know this ever-changing field and the unique interaction of image and music.
This year, provocation has given way to a meditative and timeless transcendence that soothes and heals in these troubled times. Colours fade into poetic black and white, as music embraces new trajectories. Men have become fragile and emotional, while women have grown ever more steely.
Dāvis Gauja
Ir par maz
LV, 3’08’’, 2025
Artists: Evija Vēbere, E.V.
Album: Anomālijas (2025)
A darkly alluring contemporary tale of Icarus, recounting the noble act of burning out in a world that demands everything of us. In portraying the new normality of humanity, director Gauja visually balances between chin in water and skin scorched by the blaze of great ambition.
António Tainha
March nr. 6.2
EE, 3’00’’, 2025
Artist: Maria Faust
Album: Sacrum Facere: Marches Rewound and Rewritten (2025)
A sensitively poetic response by Portuguese director Tainha to the work of Estonian alto saxophonist and composer Faust, who explores human degradation on the scale of war. “Wars, terror and tragedy follow us all the time but the children need to be fed, educated and loved. That is a fact, and evil knows it too,” says Faust.
Lena Klyukina
Švelnūs Jausmai
LT, 4’11”, 2025
Band: Solo Ansamblis
Album: Scenos (2025)
A playful music video by Lithuanian illustrator and artist Klyukina, with a title that translates to “tender feelings” – its animation frames shifted manually to create the pleasantly awkward vitality of the touch of a hand. Reflecting on how, as things around us change, we still feel the same emotions as humanity did thousands of years ago, the artist has crafted a journey into 1980s synth-pop nostalgia with a synthetic sense of déjà vu.
Ieva Balode
Interval III
LV, 4’20’’, 2025
BAND: Tesa
Album: INTERVAL (2025)
A visually meditative piece by Latvian analogue film activist Balode, in which memories of the past intertwine with anxious premonitions of the future. Interval is the fleeting moment between notes, where hope resides – hope that music might heal us and free us from the dim trauma of humanity.
Elīza Jordane
Āda
LV, 3’37’’, 2025
Band: Polifauna
single, 2025
After parting from his beloved, a man is compelled to meet his own feminine side – his anima – which longs to be recognised and embraced. Through pain, sensuality and revelation, in this dance of texture and masculine nakedness, duality is transformed into unity.
Helias Dzimoulakis
ačgārnis/rentgens
LV, 4’24’’, 2025
Artists: Zvīņas, Lote Voiska
Album: dziesmas no sestā stāva (2025)
Greek director Dzimoulakis has conjured a surreal café, Õcculus Café Mágika, where Latvian songs “upside down” and “X-ray” play on repeat. To escape this madhouse imprisonment, in the visually overloaded world of the composition by local musicians Zvīņas and Lote Voiska the visitors of the café must now deploy the full arsenal of magic.
Ged Sia
Oda
LV, 4’20’’, 2025
Grupa: Solo Ansamblis
Albums: Scenos (2025)
Oda – “skin” in Lithuanian – is a retro-futuristic fairytale about a queen bee and a beekeeper, whose interaction is generated by a special operating system. A surreal journey and mythical motifs, created by the prominent Lithuanian animator and illustrator Ged Sia, also known as Gediminas Šiaulys.
Ieva Aleksa
Zeme griežas
LV, 3’30’’, 2025
Artist: ANNIKA
single, 2025
Blending poetic fragility with inner strength, this track by new generation musician ANNIKA is wrapped in a playful analogue media visuality. It rekindles the feelings of childhood, when the world seemed larger and forever unknowable, reminding us of the delicate relationship between humanity and nature, our unity with the cosmos, and with each other here on Earth, which holds us as it spins.
Georgii Merkis
Man Down
LV, 4’02’’, 2025
Artist: Vecera
Album: FLUX (2025)
Things so familiar to us – jealousy, betrayal and emotional chaos – are expressed visually in a dance of colour and light, the protagonist experiencing the story through different perspectives. Until it all merges together – like red and blue. An attempt by director Merkis to screen images that arise in the mind when listening to music.
Tīna Pankūka
Pati tālākā dienvidu pludmale (Liepu lapu laipa)
LV, 2’13’’, 2025
Artist: ritunsiic
Album: Liepu lapu laipa (2024)
An original take by director Tīna Pankūka on the age-old story of the hamster wheel – the struggle for survival, where exhaustion feels like the only comfort. Yet, just when we have become estranged from ourselves in this futile race, nature embraces and heals us in its lap of truth – if only for an instant, before it all begins again!
Jaan Sinka
Must ülikond
EE, 2’56’’, 2025
Artist: Taavi-Peeter Liiv
single, 2025
A laconic black-and-white satire by the veteran Estonian music video-maker Sinka – a tale of a funeral perhaps better left unattended, especially if your pockets hold emptiness and regret.
Ritvars Stankevičs, Artūrs Vanags
150
LV, 3’11’’, 2025
Artist: Ozols
single, 2025
Ozols is the hip-hop long-distance runner of Latvia, a name that needs no explanation for generations now. Remaining faithful to the hallmarks of the genre, directors of 150 Stankevičs and Vanags have found a black-and-white middle path between maturity and rebelliousness, literally and figuratively expressing the rapper’s motto: always on the road, always forward, always transforming!
Robertas Nevecka
Dragas
LT, 4’44’’, 2025
Band: Lapkričio dvidešimtosios orkestras
Album: Antroji pamaina (2022)
A visual experiment for a Lithuanian underground punk orchestra by animator Nevecka, employing distorted images generated with a 3D tool and a scanning app. Honouring chaos, defects have become effects, and the unfiltered, primal visual experience proves that rebelliousness resides in digital disorder.
Rolands Čivčs
dzīve tāda
LV, 3’37’’, 2025
Artist: rolands če
single, 2024
A dually bittersweet tale, where celebrating life intertwines with its heavy experiences, often masked with a party filter. Viewing reality without condemnation, where grit can become the starting point for growth and change. The range of hip-hop artist rolands če is broad not only musically – he also creates music videos for his tracks, so that the visual narrative expands on what the author started in his music.
Edgars Kaupers, Emīls Kaupers
Labākā doma pasaulē
LV, 4’21’’, 2025
Artists: Carnival Youth, Evija Vēbere
single, 2025
A contemporary approach by Kaupers brothers to the tale of the princess and the dwarf: the fair maiden dies from an accidental strike of a golf ball, but her lover manages to save his beloved by stopping time with the sound of a flute. A visually rich and witty narrative, filmed on a golf course – fortunately without the crew sharing the princess’s fate.