This year, Latvia is sharing a spotlight with neighboring Lithuania and Estonia at the European Film Market, which has dedicated its 2023 Country in Focus Spotlight to the Baltic nations. It’s a sign of the tremendous strides the country has taken to put itself on the world cinema map, with the screen industries both producing more films and TV series than ever before and luring increasingly ambitious international projects to Northeastern Europe.
Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin:
Blue Blood
Director: Juris Kursietis
Producers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*
The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.
Sales: N/A
Soviet Milk
Director: Ināra Kolmane
Producers: Jānis Juhņēvičs, Marta Romanova-Jēkabsone...
Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin:
Blue Blood
Director: Juris Kursietis
Producers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*
The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.
Sales: N/A
Soviet Milk
Director: Ināra Kolmane
Producers: Jānis Juhņēvičs, Marta Romanova-Jēkabsone...
- 2/17/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Event took place in Trieste from January 22-25
Projects from Spain, Ukraine and Belgium shared the top prizes at this year’s When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production forum, which was held in Trieste from January 22-25.
Spanish filmmaker Enrique Buleo’s Still Life With Ghosts won the €5,000 Center Serbia Award. Produced by Spain’s Quatre Films and France’s Ikki Films, the film tells the story of ghosts and humans who seek to resolve their everyday problems in a small village in rural Spain. Buleo’s short Hell and Such received a Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand festival.
Projects from Spain, Ukraine and Belgium shared the top prizes at this year’s When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production forum, which was held in Trieste from January 22-25.
Spanish filmmaker Enrique Buleo’s Still Life With Ghosts won the €5,000 Center Serbia Award. Produced by Spain’s Quatre Films and France’s Ikki Films, the film tells the story of ghosts and humans who seek to resolve their everyday problems in a small village in rural Spain. Buleo’s short Hell and Such received a Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand festival.
- 1/26/2023
- by Alina Trabattoni
- ScreenDaily
Adult children: Girl Blazes Through Childhood in Olte’s Debut
Frantically moving and tweaking, the handheld camera desperately tries not to lose focus of a stone-faced tomboyish teenage girl Anastasia (Emma Skirmante), the protagonist of first-time director Linda Olte‘s coming-of-age drama Sisters. The opening scene in which Anastasia runs and tries to break through a metal fence commands attention in a way the rest of the film rarely does.
Anastasia has every reason to want to escape. She lives in a Latvian orphanage with her charming little sister Diana (Gerda Aljēna), awaiting the arrival of their potential foster parents from America.…...
Frantically moving and tweaking, the handheld camera desperately tries not to lose focus of a stone-faced tomboyish teenage girl Anastasia (Emma Skirmante), the protagonist of first-time director Linda Olte‘s coming-of-age drama Sisters. The opening scene in which Anastasia runs and tries to break through a metal fence commands attention in a way the rest of the film rarely does.
Anastasia has every reason to want to escape. She lives in a Latvian orphanage with her charming little sister Diana (Gerda Aljēna), awaiting the arrival of their potential foster parents from America.…...
- 10/21/2022
- by Amar Komic
- IONCINEMA.com
The Rome-based sales outfit has committed to focusing on more international titles this year.
Italy’s True Colours has unveiled its 2022 Cannes Marché slate, as it commits to focusing on more international titles this year.
The Rome-based sales outfit will start selling rights for Delta, Michele Vannucci’s second film after 2016 Venice Horizons debut I Was A Dreamer. The film, produced by Groenlandia and Kino Produzioni with Rai Cinema, is finished and looking for festival slots. The noir drama stars Alessandro Borghi and Luigi Locascio (both David di Donatello winners for On My Skin and One Hundred Steps, respectively) in...
Italy’s True Colours has unveiled its 2022 Cannes Marché slate, as it commits to focusing on more international titles this year.
The Rome-based sales outfit will start selling rights for Delta, Michele Vannucci’s second film after 2016 Venice Horizons debut I Was A Dreamer. The film, produced by Groenlandia and Kino Produzioni with Rai Cinema, is finished and looking for festival slots. The noir drama stars Alessandro Borghi and Luigi Locascio (both David di Donatello winners for On My Skin and One Hundred Steps, respectively) in...
- 5/4/2022
- by Gabriele Niola
- ScreenDaily
The Latvian-Italian co-production, staged by Fenixfilm and Albolina Film, will be ready for release in spring 2022. Latvian filmmaker Linda Olte is now preparing her first fiction feature, a drama entitled Sisters. The story, penned by the helmer herself, follows two sisters, 13-year-old Anastasia and nine-year-old Diana. When the head of the orphanage tells them that the Johnson family from the USA wants to adopt them, Diana feels as if she’s won the lottery and cannot wait to go to the States. Anastasia, on the other hand, has mixed feelings. She is hoping to live with her biological mother, who makes a sudden return to their lives. The film’s main cast includes Emma Skirmante, Gerda Aljēna, Katrīna Krēsliņa and Iveta Pole. The technical crew members are DoP Aleksandrs Grebņevs, production designer Laura Dišlere and costume designer Sieglinde Michaeler. Shot in Latvia and Italy in both English and Latvian, the movie’s.
Milcho Manchevski, Pablo Berger.
Co-productions from French director Michel Hazanavicius and Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are among 24 selected for funding in the latest Eurimages round.
Hazanavicius, whose 2011 title The Artist which won five Oscars including best picture and director, receives €470,000 towards Franco-Belgian animation The Most Precious Of Cargoes.
Adapted from a 2019 novel by French writer Jean-Claude Grumberg, the animated film is set during the Second World War, when a Jewish father throws one of his twins from the train to Auschwitz in a desperate attempt to save him. The boy is then discovered by a childless Polish couple.
Co-productions from French director Michel Hazanavicius and Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are among 24 selected for funding in the latest Eurimages round.
Hazanavicius, whose 2011 title The Artist which won five Oscars including best picture and director, receives €470,000 towards Franco-Belgian animation The Most Precious Of Cargoes.
Adapted from a 2019 novel by French writer Jean-Claude Grumberg, the animated film is set during the Second World War, when a Jewish father throws one of his twins from the train to Auschwitz in a desperate attempt to save him. The boy is then discovered by a childless Polish couple.
- 3/22/2021
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
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