20/10/2022 - Latvian director Linda Olte's debut film is a sensitively written, linear social drama which sheds light on the reality of orphanages and international adoptions

Family trees – in other words, family relationships reduced to and drawn in botanic form, bearing good apples and bad applies, dry branches and fallen leaves – are central to Sisters [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the first work by Latvian director Linda Olte, which enjoyed its premiere this week in the Warsaw Film Festival and is now debuting in national cinemas via Baltic Content Media. And thirteen-year-old Anastasija (Emma Skirmante), alongside her fellow students, is asked by her teacher in an area not far from Riga to draw one such family tree, which she doesn’t actually possess. Living in an orphanage with her little sister Diana (Gerda Aljēna), while her bigger sister Jūlija (Katrina Kreslina) already has a months-old little girl of her own and lives in social housing, Anastasija only knows one thing about her genealogy: she was born in prison, where her mother Alla (Iveta Pole) was locked up many times, most recently after throwing the man who was torturing little Diana with a lighter, out of the window. Now Alla has been released and Anastasija tracks her down because she wants at all costs to rebuild a family with that wholly unreliable woman, who promised her children that she’d get them out of that institution where she herself grew up, only to disappear into thin air. Anastasija gets herself a tattoo of an A (for Alla) on her arm, she cuts her hair like her mother’s, and she puts on the latter’s necklace. But there’s a tempting alternative in front of her: Anastasija and Diana could be adopted by a wealthy North American family (a mum, a dad and their teenage daughter), an opportunity which the orphanage director describes as a miracle which won’t come round again for a now-teenage Latvian girl.

Utterly convincing in her role, newcomer Emma Skirmante is followed constantly by the director for the full 104 minutes of the film, and her profound yet disoriented look is soon shared by the viewer. Anastasija moves confidently on her skateboard through the desolate urban landscape, her behaviour ranging from the gentle way she cares for her little niece or jokes around during the brief encounters she enjoys with her mother, to demonstrably angry acts. She frees stray dogs from a pound, she shoplifts in supermarkets, she damages cars, she transports drugs for a young adult whom we sense has ulterior, sexual designs on her. But rather than overegging the film’s more dramatic moments, Linda Olte allows viewers to reflect on the picture she’s painting. For this reason, the scenes which see the sisters spending several “trial” days with the persistent, puritanical, and conservative American family - where the protagonist tests their limits by squeezing herself into ultra-short shorts and teaching her American peer to dance reggaeton provocatively, or where little Diana sniffs glue with her future sister, just like she’s learned to do in the orphanage - are somewhat conventional.

Although the themes probed in this sensitively written, linear social drama have already been fairly well explored in other films, the protagonist’s inspired final decision will undoubtedly leave a mark on viewers. The aim of the director - whose experience in TV documentaries revolves around social questions pertaining to families and children - is to raise public awareness of the problems associated with adoption, and this might encourage wider reflection on the risks that come with breaking up family units, in a European context of social disadvantage, alcoholism, unemployment and poverty, and at a time when several politicians are urging greater emphasis on “God, Country and Family”.

Sisters is co-produced by Latvian firms Trickster Pictures, Fenixfilm and Deep Sea Studios, alongside Italy’s Albolina Film. True Colours is handling international sales.

(Translated from Italian)