The National Cinema Award “Lielais Kristaps” will take place from February 23 to 26. “Lielā Kristaps” program will include film premieres and screenings of films nominated for the award. The closing ceremony, which will take place in the Riga Circus, will be shown live by Latvijas Televīzija and LSM.lv. Everyone is also invited to participate in the audience vote of “Lielā Kristaps”, where you can choose your favorite until midnight on February 24.
Dartas Cirina: Julien, what is it that you, as a person deeply immersed in cinema, would like to highlight?
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: What immediately comes to mind is the genre-wise and also the aesthetic diversity that is on this year’s list. “Restless Minds”, “Sam’s Travels” and also “Sacrifice” catch the eye the most. Three pretty crazy movies.
Dartas Cirina: I would add – [filmas], which are centered on men. Mainly. In “Sacrifice” the man is in nature, the main character of “Sema’s Travels” is a foreigner who ends up in a barn in Latvia. Thinking about the debut film section, in “Revolution” we also have male artists, their anxiety and restlessness. Similarly, “Restless Minds” – male artists who have come to this same desire for revolution, both films, I think, form a synergy in a sense. Speaking of the central characters, about actor’s cinema, Viesturs Kairis’s film “January” as well. There’s also an up-and-coming artist against the backdrop of the January barricades. And then, which I find extremely interesting against the background of these films, we have “Sisters”.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: I would like to ask you right away, do you see something in this year’s list of the best feature films that simply hasn’t been there before? “Janvāris” by Viestura Kairis, which is one of the most watched movies of last year, even though it was released at the very end of the year, a wonderful movie, I still can’t hide my feelings!
Dartas Cirina: I agree, yes. It is a historical fiction, which is not a great rarity in Latvian cinematography in recent years, but there are such tricks, features, which, in my opinion, make it stand out from the narratives of this type of the last five years. And “Sisters” to some extent continues that tradition of social realism, sort of slice of lifeslice of life.
Dartas Cirina: Remembering, some time ago “Satori” had a discussion in which you, Žulijen, Alice Zariņa, Agnese Lipska also participated. You spoke about honesty in cinema, also in anticipation of the 2022 cinema boom. Keeping in mind this idea of what honest cinema really is, at which point the viewer experiences an honest act on screen, I feel like Sisters is something where I personally experienced that. What seemed most significant to me, that from Linda Olte’s point of view and also from the entire team involved, this honesty is an interest in other lives. Not such an introspective view as maybe in “January”, which is a completely different kind of strategy, but the fact that you try to take an honest, interested look and semi-documentary also creates these fictional characters, their reactions. This, in my opinion, is something that should be highlighted in Latvian cinema, especially in the context of recent years. In addition, there is organic work with both non-actors and actors. Emma Skirmante, Gerda Aljēna, Iveta Pole, also Elita Kļaviņa, in my opinion, there is a wonderful ensemble of actresses.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: What pleasantly surprised me in “Sisters”, to put it very simply, is that this story about an orphanage, about the search for one’s identity, about such a violent and unpleasant relationship is bright and full of humor. And here Linda Olte has succeeded in what many before her have unfortunately failed, and everything has remained in such a mess and quite a lot of grief.
Dartas Cirina: I think that the movie “Māsas” makes a good connection with Matīs Kaža’s rave drama “Neona pavasaris”, which did not win the nomination for the best feature film, in a peculiar way. Mainly the acting is highlighted and also the performance of the creative technical team. This connection is interesting, Matīss Kaža, also in his twenties, one of our most prolific local filmmakers. For the film “Sisters” he has worked as a producer, cherishing this work. He is the director of the film “For Neon Spring”. Here too we see a coming-of-age story, here in an urbanized, urban environment, the family situation is completely different, but its novelty, in my opinion, is an attempt to get out of the usual coming-of-age stories that we remember, for example, five, maybe eight years ago, with Jānis “Mommy, I love you” by Nord, “I’m here” by Renard Vimba. The main character in the movie “Neona pavasaris”, played by Marija Luise Melķe, also has this turmoil in her identity, but on many levels, both sexual identity, her own identity in the family, and also in school, and in general, on a meta level, in her own life. These micro-conflicts, in my opinion, are quite an interesting approach in terms of screenplay, which makes this film interesting as well.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: In fact, if you think about it, there is a nuance that connects at least two films shown last year, and that is that we finally get to see the night life of Latvia, or at least Riga. “Neon Spring” got me pretty excited about how kinky and alive and real this rave world that the main character Laine finds herself in seems. The good thing, I think, is that there is absolutely no shortage of gore on this list, and here we are at Troubled Minds, The Travels of Sam, and The Sacrifice.
Dartas Cirina: In “Restless Minds” we see two brothers. I wrote about this film in the spring and also included Ruben Østlund’s film “The Square” – a square also appears in “The Troubled Minds”, that’s where everything starts.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: I completely agree, in the review I wrote about this same film, I also mentioned Østlund’s “The Square”. It seems that Eastlund and the Abel brothers somehow form a bond of like-minded people. Also [Ēstlunda] the film “Triangle of Sadness”, which has won various national and transnational cinema awards with great scope, with such a long tooth and a crooked finger, shows a cheapness to this delicate world. I think that in the case of “Restless Minds” it is an interesting social satire, also about the world of contemporary art here in Latvia, where it hits, where it doesn’t, everyone has to understand for themselves, but it is something new and unprecedented, some aura of mysticism around there are.
Dartas Cirina: Yes, the internal cult of their community is also addressed through the two brothers, who are played by the actor, musician Toms Auniņš and the director, actor Mārcis Lācis.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: Marcis Lācis, the same one who directed “Revolution”.
Dartas Cirina: I found “Revolution” more sympathetic in its doom of a dead end or art environment. A film like self-harm, with cynical teeth, caustic, suicide in a way. Although the film adheres to the theater, performing arts environment, also to artists and cultural workers, where you live in a constant drain from project to project. We are all on a very similar train. Although many of the artistic ideas in the film “Revolution” are not fully resolved successfully, in my opinion, the very application or attempt to resolve them is also quite compelling.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: The thing that connected me the most in “Restless Minds” would not even be the reflection of contemporary art and this world, but rather finally such a warm and, at least to my eyes, authentic reflection of male love. Two brothers trying to save each other from themselves. I think there is something biographical about the Abel brothers… Brothers about brothers. It says something so well and sweetly. Thinking about this movie with time lapse, I think it’s the one that has stuck with me the most. With “The Travels of Sam” it’s interesting because this movie, a fairy tale, a black comedy about how people live…
Dartas Cirina: It’s to protect the viewer who doesn’t want to be what they see on the screen, I think. In any case, I am not offended by the film.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: The pleasant and enjoyable dimension is that the film is sufficiently self-deprecating, which plays out perfectly both in the relationship of the character portrayed by Kevin Jansen with the essentially violent Kirki and in the absolutely toxic sense of belonging. There is all this pastoral, no matter how dirty it is… The first associations are the textures of this film: mud and battered walls, soot. Accordingly, Aik Karapetyan essentially creates a capsule in which he builds a microcosm of society. You said that when you watched the movie, you started to enjoy it the third time, I also watched it three or even four times, because it is a movie that you want to watch three or four times.
Dartas Cirina: She also reveals herself more and more from time to time. And that’s what I really want to highlight – its textures, colors and sounds are so baroque and thick. What fascinates and interests me the most about cinema is the details you choose to put this world together. And it is in “The Voyages of Sam”, which seems to be a completely simple work in terms of plot, that there are many layers and levels. There are several wonderful scenes, especially with Normund Griestins, there are interesting folkloric motifs, transformations where a person becomes an animal and vice versa, everything happens so imperceptibly, but if you are observant, then you notice. And that creates that extra interest, that smolder, I think.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: “The victim”. Another fairy tale. Not quite a fairy tale, a horror story.
Dartas Cirina: The action takes place in the historical land of the Libyan people, a village or settlement of peculiar people. Then there is this active recreation enthusiast Igor Šelegovski, with all his bright equipment, as if marking the fact that he is a city dweller, having come to a completely different reality, environment. The way Uģis Olte tried to create this environment gives me slight associations with “Twin Peak”.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: Me too. Mysticism. Uģis Olte is also a director of documentaries and programs, in this film the camera is very easy, she swims through and with everything, there are various transitions from hand-held camera to static camera. There are quite impressive landscapes that are brought to life with movement, both in the acting and in the work of the cameraman.
Dartas Cirina: Yes, the camera is present. Its parallel, which has also been mentioned a lot in connection with this film, is the year 1999 – “Blair Witches”, quite innovative for its time, the so-called lost footage, a work of lost footage, such a wild thriller. Here, too, those techniques are many and in different directions. When watching “Victims” for the first time, it seemed to me that there are so many ideas, symbols, signs, sounds, images, matter, also the internal direction and points of the images, that there is such an overly intense feeling of visual noise. If you anoint yourself and indulge in the film for the second or third time, of course you will look at him differently each time.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: It’s not for nothing that our first mythological thriller, it seems to me, describes him that way.
Dartas Cirina: The main character of the film goes through such a mythological path, through this Upurga, which is a river. After such an ecstatic ritual with extremely sweet-smelling flowers, his sister and most of the group members with whom they went on this expedition and advertising shoot disappear on the river bank. Then his further path, getting to know the local environment and various specimens, reaching the scaly girl, it seems to me, such direct adaptations from “Twin Peaks” or David Lynch’s films, of course, until these sauerkraut here.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: Up to sauerkraut and agriculture in general as a mini model of the world. Here, I think, there is something similar in “The Travels of Sam” and also in “The Sacrifice”, this farmstead where matters of life and death are decided. “Victim” is extremely entertaining, it is very dynamic and it is built in such a way that this story, this tension, does not get lost in all this jumble of symbols, sounds, colors and images.
Dartas Cirina: Sometimes it seems that what we are talking about is more extraordinary, perhaps more extreme cinema, but it is also like combing your hair so that it looks disheveled.
Julijens Nohums Coulibaly: Of course, we are not talking about such an absolute transgression or provocation in this case, no. We are talking about provocations in the current cinema field in Latvia, and this, I think, is good, because we have had a lot of twisted cinema, where those cinema hairs do not form a comb or a braid, they only form a beautiful path in the middle.
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