National Film Awards “Great Kristaps” Premieres and Nominated Films

February is the National Film Awards “Great Kristaps” month. This year, in the period from February 1 to 4, we are waiting for two premieres, screenings of the nominated films in “Splendid Palace” and “K.Suns” cinemas, as well as an online film program available worldwide.

In the evening of February 2, in cooperation with the “Griffonmark” studio, the premiere is expected Reina Übela for a psychological horror film “Dragoons”. Reinis is the director of the animated short film “Hope to Live” (2017), which was awarded at the Brazilian international animation festival “Stop Motion”, the short game “Bezķermenis” (2021) and the documentary short films “Valery is Eternal” (2022), as well as “My Neighbor hit my cat” (2022), which won the National Film Award for Best Student Film. “Dragūni”, a full-length film, with which Reinis graduated from the Latvian Academy of Culture, has received a nomination for the best debut of “Lielā Kristaps”. This year, his short film “My Skin Peeling”, which was created in addition to “Dragoons”, is also expected to be shown on the screens.

The events of the film “Dragūni” are centered on the arrival of future parents, Pavel and Sabīne, in a manor surrounded by an old forest, which is run by the mysterious members of the Dragūni family.

After an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the grotesque forest, the two find themselves back at the manor when Sabine is in labor. The director refers to Victorian and later gothic literature and horror stories as sources of inspiration for this film. These are Edgar Allan Poe’s “Facts in the Case of Mr. Waldemar” (1845), Charlotte Perkins Gilman or Stetson’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” (1907), stories in which the interaction of the environment with the mechanisms of the human psyche plays an essential role.

In the program, we also learn more about what awaits the participants and viewers of the National Cinema Award ceremony. Guests of the program – the director of the ceremony Matīss Kaža and the director of the film “Dragoons”. Reinis Übelis.

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