Latvia has chosen “Ulya,” a black-and-white drama inspired by Soviet-era basketball star Uljana Semjonova, as its submission for the international feature Oscar, and its director says the film is drawing crowds at home. Director Viesturs Kairišs told The Hollywood Reporter that “Ulya” has sold about 105,000 tickets in Latvia since opening there Sept. 16. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in May and opens the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on Friday. It is a co-production among Latvia, Poland, Estonia and Lithuania.
The story follows Ulya, a very tall teenager raised in a remote Old Believer farming community in 1964. When a class photo reaches basketball coaches, she is taken to Riga to train with a top club. Her height wins her a place in the sport and little else. She struggles with an identity that others reduce to her size, and she retreats home before choosing to pursue the game. Semjonova, who stood roughly seven feet tall, won two Olympic gold medals, three world championships and became an inaugural member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Kārlis Arnolds Avots, a man, plays the title role and co-wrote the screenplay. The casting has drawn attention in the Oscar field, where several entries examine Soviet-era women athletes. Chulpan Khamatova and Aleksas Kazanavičius also star.
Kairišs has said he never intended to make a standard sports picture. “I don’t think I could ever make a nice, typical biopic,” he told Variety, citing Werner Herzog as a reference point. He and his team used unconventional camera work and soft focus to stay close to Semjonova’s point of view. Some collaborators, he said, still pushed for a conventional approach.
The nomination bid carries history. Two years ago, Gints Zilbalodis’s “Flow” delivered Latvia its first Oscar, winning best animated feature. The country has been nominated only once in the international category since it began submitting films in 1992. “Ulya” is Kairišs’s third Oscar entry, after “The Chronicles of Melanie” in 2017 and “January” in 2022. The film has also found buyers abroad, including Five Star Distribution for former Yugoslavia. The Academy will announce its shortlist later this year.
