From February 6 of this year, LMT Viedtelevizija will be able to watch the latest feature film “January” by director Viesturs Kairis, which tells about the time of the barricades of 1991 and the growth in it.
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The film has received high praise so far, including the honor of Best Foreign Film at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it premiered. The feature film “Janvāris” has been nominated in 12 categories for the Latvian National Cinema Award “Lielais Kristaps”, which will be presented at the end of February.
The events of the film take place in January 1991. The center of the film is Jazis, a young guy who cannot decide how to live his life after finishing school. Conscription into the Soviet army threatens, the first serious relationship develops. The bohemia of the early 90s, the protest of a generation. In the meantime, the struggle for the independence of the country continues in Latvia, the OMON special task unit of the Soviet militia threatens to stop the Baltic freedom struggle, barricades are being built in Riga. The film’s young characters are far from any political life, but circumstances drag them into the epicenter of events and force them to make a choice.
“January” is a historical and autobiographical excursion during the barricades about young cinematographers who are involved in the political events of January 1991 in Riga.
The film features: Kārlis Arnolds Avots, Alice Dzene, Sandis Runge, Baiba Broka, Alex Kazanavičs, Artūrs Skrastiņš, Imants Strads, Lauris Dzelzītis, Kaspars Dumburs, Juhans Ulfsaks and others. In the film, there is music confirming the spirit of the era – the songs of the bands “Zig Zag”, “Zzeltenie pastnieki”, “Aurora”, which were current at the time.
“With a delay of a few years, I belong to the director’s generation and I can testify that the film has exactly that elusive layer – the atmosphere, the whirlwind, the maximalism of youth, in which everything is done at once and to the end. Well, maybe it’s the same for young people of all times, but the 80s. / At the turn of the 90s, it was somehow much more desperate and radical, because no one was clear what the all-around upheavals in society meant for his own personal future,” film critic Kristīne Matīsa wrote about the film “Janvāris” in the newspaper “Diena”.
The feature film “January” had its world premiere in June 2022 at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York, USA, where it won the jury award as the best foreign film. At the international Rome film festival “Festa del cinema di Roma” the film won the award as the best film of the competition, Viesturs Kairišs received the award for the best director, and Kārlis Arnolds Avots – the award named after Vittorio Gasman as the best actor. In the main competition program of the Warsaw International Film Festival, Viesturs Kairišs received the award as the best director. The film “Janvāris” was also chosen as Latvia’s representative to claim a nomination for the Academy Award “Oscar” in the category “International Feature Film Award”.
