Latvia has selected Viesturs Kairišs’ Ulya as its submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (see the news). The decision was announced by the National Film Centre of Latvia (NKC) on 18 August, following a vote by the country’s national selection committee.

The Latvian-Estonian-Polish-Lithuanian co-production world-premiered in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Inspired by the early life and career of legendary Latvian basketball player Uļjana Semjonova, the film centres on Ulya, an exceptionally tall teenage girl growing up in an Old Believer community in rural Soviet Latvia in 1964. After a class photograph attracts the attention of basketball coaches, she is brought to Riga and drawn into the world of elite sport, while struggling to reconcile other people’s expectations with her own sense of identity.

The title had previously been one of Latvia’s most prominent international festival launches of the year. Following Cannes, Kārlis Arnolds Avots, who plays Ulya and also co-wrote the screenplay, snagged the Best Performance Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July. The jury praised his physical and restrained interpretation of the character.

Ulya was chosen over one other film submitted for consideration, Dzintars Dreibergs’ Escape Net. The selection committee comprised producers Alise Ģelze and Matīss Kaža, film critic Kristīne Simsone, producer-director Raitis Ābele and NKC director Dita Rietuma. According to the National Film Centre, the committee took into account both the film’s artistic qualities and the international profile it has developed since Cannes. Its festival trajectory and Avots’ Jerusalem accolade were considered important assets as the title now moves into the international Oscar race.

Avots developed the screenplay alongside Līvija Ulmane and Andris Feldmanis, and was also involved in shaping the project’s original concept. Kairišs’ creative team included Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staroń, production designer Ieva Jurjāne and editor Armands Začs. Produced by Guntis Trekteris for Latvia’s Ego Media, Ulya was made in co-production with Allfilm in Estonia, Staron Film in Poland and Tremora in Lithuania. The pic is slated to have its Latvian theatrical premiere on 16 September.

Kairišs is no stranger to representing Latvia at the Academy Awards: his period drama January was the country’s submission in 2022. More recent Latvian entries have included Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow, winner of the LUX Audience Award and the Oscar for Best Animated Film, and Raitis and Lauris Ābele’s Dog of God. The Latvian submission tradition dates back to Jānis Streičs’ The Child of Man, put forward in 1991, while the country resumed regular participation in the international-feature race with Aigars Grauba’s Defenders of Riga in 2008.