The highest professional awards of the Estonian film industry – the Estonian National Cinema Awards – were awarded in Tallinn. Estonian colleagues recognized Andri Grant as the best editing director, recognizing his work on the Estonian-Latvian co-production “The Sleeping Beast” with the award. From the Latvian side, the film was produced by “Studija Lokomotīve” and producers Dominiks Jarmakovičs and Roberts Vinovskis.
Film director Jāks Kilmi, who is known in Latvia for the film Christmas in the Jungle (2022), received the Andras Grant Award in Tallinn. Director Kilmi’s thriller Sleeping Beast / Tagurpidi torn / Sleeping Beast has also won international recognition – it had its world premiere at one of the most important children’s film festivals in Giffoni (Italy), was screened at the Class A film festival in Goa (India), and at a number of other important international film festivals. At the Estonian National Film Festival, Sleeping Beast received a total of eight nominations and two awards – for best film editing and best screenplay.
In 2022, with the participation of the filmmakers, Sleeping Beast celebrated its Latvian premiere as part of the RIGA IFF (Riga International Film Festival). The film tells about the fragile border between fantasy and reality in teenage games, the plot follows ten-year-old Kristjan, who is faced with a choice – to do the right thing and stand up to his friends, or to give in to peer pressure and please them. The film depicts a situation in the life of a boy in which he has to make a decision – what is acceptable to him and what is not, what is good and what is bad.
Andris Grants is one of Latvia’s most experienced editing directors, who has been working in this field for 14 years. He studied in Great Britain and after his return worked on many Latvian films, including co-productions and foreign films (Firstborn, Homo novus, Tēvs Nakts, Jelgava ’94, Emīlija. Queen of Latvian Press, MOJ, etc.). Andris Grants has been nominated several times for the Latvian National Cinema Award Lielais Kristaps as the Best Editing Director, he received the award for the documentary films Burning (2016) and Lords of Riga (2015). At the moment, Andris is working on the completion of Signe Birkova’s feature film Lotus, this film is also being produced at Lokomotive Studio.
Andris remembers the work on the film Sleeping Beast as full of joyful challenges: “The director and I worked a lot on the structure of the film, arranging and re-arranging the episodes of the film on the wall of the producer’s office with colored sticky notes. Sometimes during the night a leaf fell and disappeared, thus creating a completely new twist of the film . Admittedly, these random innovations never really worked, but it served as a reminder to me that a film can be edited a thousand different ways, and each time it will come out completely different.”
“I am really happy about this high evaluation from the professionals of the neighboring country – it serves as a confirmation of how important it is to cooperate,” – emphasizes producer Roberts Vinovskis. “For more than 10 years, we have been intensively making co-production films with our colleagues in Estonia and Lithuania, and by combining our best talents, we can achieve an excellent result – almost all of our co-production films have premiered at internationally prestigious A-class film festivals, several have also been nominated as national Oscar nominations in the Best category international feature film”.
Composer Kārlis Auzāns and sound director Matīss Krišjānis also worked on the film Sleeping Beast from the Latvian side, the thriller was made in cooperation between the Estonian film studio Stellar Films and Studija Lokomotīve. Latvian side producers – Dominiks Jarmakovičs and Roberts Vinovskis. The making of the film was supported by the National Cinema Center.
