Viesturs Kairišs’s January [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] will represent Latvia for the 15^th time in the Best International Feature Film category of the Academy Awards (see the news). The picture had its world premiere at Tribeca, where it won the Best International Feature Award. It later triumphed at the Rome International Film Festival and the Warsaw Film Festival.

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January will be screened in New York on 9 December and in Malibu on 12 December, while hoping to make the final shortlist in the Best International Feature Film category.

January is the director’s partly autobiographical story of a young man, Jazis (Kārlis Arnolds Avots), who experiences political turmoil and the fight for Latvia’s independence in 1991.

The creative team describes it as “a very cinematic and mesmerising work of art that fuses personal and historical themes but, most importantly, reminds the world that the dangers the world faced in recent history have not disappeared today and are by no means limited to the Baltic countries”.

“It was very important for these people to be brought together through strong emotion. We, those who lived during those ‘crazy’ times, always went against the grain when we were young. I really remember a nation, and a society, fighting for its freedom, and also my friends and myself fighting for our individual freedom. I remember all those characters very well because I was one of them,” said Kairišs.

Film historian and head of the National Film Centre of Latvia Dita Rietuma highlighted the multi-layered nature of the film and the magnitude of the historic events experienced by the young lead: “The film's protagonist, Jazis, played by Kārlis Arnolds Avots, has a passion for cinema, and it is precisely that – cinematography, references to the legacy of world cinema culture, and also the context and personalities of Latvian cinema in the early 1990s – that distinguishes January from many other films on recent history and allows it to resonate with the world at large.”

The January US campaign is being supported by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) and “missionLatvia”. LIAA also operates the cash-rebate incentive for foreign film productions that choose Latvia as their filming location. For more information, please click here.

January was produced by Inese Boka-Grube and Gints Grube for Latvia’s Mistrus Media, and co-produced by Kestutis Drazdauskas for Lithuania’s Artbox and Malgorzata Staron for Poland’s Staron Film. The project received backing from the National Film Centre of Latvia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, the Lithuanian Film Centre, the Polish Film Institute, the LIAA, Eurimages, Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, Latvian Television, the Latvian Foundation, and the Education, Culture and Sports Department of Riga City Council. Finland’s The Yellow Affair is in charge of its international sales.

The picture will be screened on Friday 9 December, at New York’s Nordic Center in America (also known as Scandinavia House). The screening will take place in the Victor Borge Hall at 7 pm. For more information, please click here.

The Malibu screening will take place at the Regency Agoura Hills Stadium at 7.30 pm on 12 December. For more information, please click here.

You can watch the teaser for January below: