Latvia
Latvia's creative tradition runs centuries deeper than its treaty relationship with Canada. The Song and Dance Festival has filled Riga with tens of thousands of voices since 1873 — a tradition old enough and significant enough to earn UNESCO inscription. The city's Art Nouveau district is one of the largest concentrations in Europe. Latvian animation has won an Academy Award. The creative tradition is real and internationally proven; the corridor with Canada is the part that remains to be built.
Latvian co-financing programme budget: approximately €5M annually (2025–2027). Provincial Canadian credits vary by jurisdiction and stack with federal CPTC.
Latvia's production infrastructure is more developed than its unused Canadian treaty corridor would suggest. Riga has purpose-built studio facilities, and Baltic Pine Films operates a backlot with standing early-twentieth-century European sets outside the city. The country can accommodate several medium-scale productions simultaneously, with crew supplemented from neighboring Baltic states when needed.
International productions have already validated the ecosystem. Kristen Stewart's directorial debut The Chronology of Water shot extensively in Latvia through Forma Pro Films. Cary Fukunaga's Blood on Snow, with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Eva Green, shot there. Sergei Loznitsa filmed Two Prosecutors entirely in Latvia. Cannes selections A Gentle Creature and Out were both Latvian co-productions. The crews are experienced, English-speaking, and internationally proven.
The animation sector is where Latvia's international co-production muscle is strongest. Signe Baumane has built a body of work spanning Latvian, American, and Italian partnerships. Gints Zilbalodis's Flow — a Latvian-French-Belgian co-production — won the 2025 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The infrastructure for international creative collaboration exists. It just hasn't been connected to Canada yet.
Why this corridor
Latvia is unusually accessible for a Canadian producer starting cold. The production infrastructure is proven — Riga's studios and Baltic Pine's backlot have carried international shoots, and the animation sector won the 2025 Best Animated Feature Oscar with Gints Zilbalodis's Flow. The financial terms are low-friction: a documentary minimum qualifying spend of €142,287 and a cash rebate of up to 30% that stacks with Canadian CPTC.
Rubedo is interested in this corridor for documentary first — the threshold is low, the National Film Centre makes direct introductions, and the animation sector offers a second natural entry point. Rubedo is looking for Latvian producers, in documentary or animation especially, open to building the corridor's first Canadian co-production.
Where to start
If you're a researcher, student, or early-career filmmaker interested in this corridor, here's what we know about where to begin.
Start here
Email the National Film Centre of Latvia at nkc@nkc.gov.lv with a short summary of who you are and what you're exploring. The NKC administers co-production certification on the Latvian side and is the institutional first point of contact for international producers. Latvia's film community is small enough that the NKC will respond directly and can make introductions to potential Latvian partners. There is no need for an existing network — the institution is the door.
Documentary as entry point
The documentary minimum spend in Latvia is €142,287 — a low threshold for treaty co-production. Combined with the cash rebate stacking with Canadian CPTC, this corridor is a financially accessible documentary co-production pathway for Canadian producers.
Documentary work in this corridor builds toward feature work using the same infrastructure. The treaty, the certifying bodies, the rebate, the production ecosystem — all apply identically to both formats. The relationships built through a documentary co-production with a Latvian partner are the relationships that make a feature co-production credible later.
Canadian institutions
The Latvian Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto houses community organizations, cultural events, and language programs. For a Toronto-based student or researcher exploring this corridor, it is a living connection to Latvia and the most accessible starting point for building familiarity with Latvian cultural and creative life from Canada.
Canadian universities with Baltic Studies programs are limited but exist. The Latvian diaspora in Canada is concentrated in Toronto with smaller communities in other major cities, with multi-generational ties that often include direct family connections to contemporary Latvia.
The accessibility advantage
Latvia's film industry is small enough that the standard advice — "attend a market, find a partner" — overstates the difficulty. The NKC makes introductions. Production companies like Forma Pro Films and Baltic Pine Films are reachable. Cold emails referencing the treaty and a clear project concept are common and often answered. The corridor has no completed Canadian co-productions yet, which means whoever does the first one is establishing the template for what this relationship looks like.
If you're a filmmaker, researcher, or institution in Latvia — or anywhere — and any of this is interesting to you, we'd like to hear from you.
contact@rubedo.ca