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Latvian director Viesturs Kairiss, who won the international narrative competition at the Tribeca Film Festival last year with his coming-of-age drama “January,” is prepping his next feature film.

“Ulya” is based on the real-life story of Ulyana Semjonova, a girl raised in the Latvian countryside who reaches a height of seven feet and would go on to become a famous professional basketball player.

Set in the 1970s in Latvia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, the film follows its titular heroine from the time she leaves the countryside at the age of 14 and travels to Riga to play basketball. Kairiss described that as a “crucial stage” in Semjonova’s life, as her body was undergoing dramatic — and traumatic — changes for a teenage girl, while she also began to learn how to overcome adversity and, through basketball, find her place in life.

Kairiss said the film was an homage...

This year, Latvia is sharing a spotlight with neighboring Lithuania and Estonia at the European Film Market, which has dedicated its 2023 Country in Focus Spotlight to the Baltic nations. It’s a sign of the tremendous strides the country has taken to put itself on the world cinema map, with the screen industries both producing more films and TV series than ever before and luring increasingly ambitious international projects to Northeastern Europe.

Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin:

Blue Blood

Director: Juris Kursietis

Producers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*

The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.

Sales: N/A

Soviet Milk

Director: Ināra Kolmane

Producers: Jānis Juhņēvičs, Marta Romanova-Jēkabsone...

When a rock festival held in Tallinn in the summer of 1988 was shut down by Soviet authorities, thousands of Estonians took to the streets, waving Estonian flags and singing patriotic songs in a bold show of defiance of Soviet rule. By the festival’s final night, some 200,000 people had joined what would later be dubbed the Singing Revolution, a catalyst for the non-violent movement that swept across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the early-‘90s and paved the way for independence.

Even under Moscow’s thumb the Baltics demanded to be heard. For decades the three small nations have drawn on their historical, cultural and economic ties to create a sum that’s bigger than its parts, a collaborative spirit that’s also energized the countries’ growing screen industries, which will share the stage as joint Countries in Focus at this year’s European Film Market.

The showcase, which is...

Food Network star Valerie Bertinelli showed fans the wonders that abstaining from alcohol does for you in a new TikTok. After participating in ‘Dry January’ (where one goes the entire month of January with no alcohol), Bertinelli reveals that she dropped down a full pants size.

“These jeans that I’m wearing were so tight a few months ago that I couldn’t comfortably button them,” she said. “Now, they’re so loose it’s time for me to go down a size.”

Additionally, Bertinelli revealed in the comment section that she is also interested in participating in Dry July and Sober October.

Bertinelli shared that her decision to be sober for 31 days came from needing to deal with emotional issues with a “clear-head.”

“When we push these feelings away, they have a way of sneaking back into our lives and causing suffering,” Bertinelli continued. “But if we face them with kindness and care,...

Global sales shingle The Yellow Affair has acquired world rights to the modern love story “Power of Love” by German helmer Jonas Rothlaender, whose breakthrough movie “Fado” nabbed a Silver Hugo at Chicago and a German Film Critics’ for best feature debut.

Julia M. Müller and Luisa Leopold are producing for Germany’s StickUp Filmproduktion, in co-production with Misha Jaari and Mark Lwoff of Finland’s Bufo (“The Gravedigger’s Wife”).

The director’s sophomore feature film turns on power dynamics in a couple and the social norms expected of a male/female relationship.

Toplining the feature are Saara Kotkaniemi and Nicola Perot as Saara and Robert, both in their 30s, who set off on an extensive summer holiday in the Finnish archipelago.

Their love is a constant play with gender role clichés, yet behind the unconventional façade, they struggle with their own insecurities. Stuck on the island and influenced by its rough nature,...

Disney’s blockbuster “Avatar: The Way of Water” ruled the U.K. and Ireland box office for the sixth consecutive weekend with £2.7 million (3.4 million), according to numbers released by Comscore.

James Cameron’s return to Pandora now has a running total of £67.6 million.

In its second weekend, Universal’s “M3gan” collected £1.35 million for a total of £4.6 million. Close behind was Paramount’s “Babylon,” which debuted in third place with £1.32 million.

A trio of Sony titles occupied fourth to sixth positions. In its fourth weekend, in fourth place, “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody” took in £766,245 for a total of £9.6 million; “Matilda the Musical” collected £661,450 in its ninth weekend for a total of £25.7 million; and in its third weekend, “A Man Called Otto” £577,305 for a total of £3.6 million.

Mubi’s Cannes winner “Holy Spider” debuted in 14th position with £60,731, including previews. Other Mubi titles on release continue to display legs.

Set in an isolated wood cabin during a heavy snow storm, Director Andrey M Paounov and Screenwriter (and long time Dn alum) Alex Barrett’s frosty feature January is the tale of an encroaching mystery that is set to devour the lives of five men who find themselves caught in a limbo between life and death, past and present, communism and capitalism, known and unknown. It’s inspired by Yordan Radichkov’s play of the same name but whilst that play is concerned with a world where small settlements start to perish, Paounov and Barrett’s film is one where the world and reality itself is at risk of collapse. Shot in gothic black and white photography and with a clever acknowledgement of cinema’s relationship with itself, it’s a feature with striking imagery that’ll linger long in the mind after the credits roll. Dn sat down with...