Panelists decide on Academy Award candidate

RIGA - A team decided on Sept. 11 that director Janis Nords’ feature film ‘Mother, I Love You’ would vie for an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Language Film, reports LETA. Six out of eight jury members gave their votes for Nords’ film, with two voting for Aigars Grauba/Andrejs Ekis’ ‘Dream Team 1935.’

Ivars Tontegode’s ‘Mushroom Pickers’ was the third candidate from Latvia for the nomination.
‘Mother, I Love You’ and ‘Dream Team 1935’ have both participated in various international film festivals this year, and fared very well. ‘Mother, I Love You’ won the Los Angeles Film Festival’s Jury Award and International Jury’s Grand Prix for the Best Feature Film in the ‘Generation Kplus’ category at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film, which premiered in Latvia on Feb. 21, is a thriller about the thirteen-year-old Raimonds and his mother. The film stars Kristofers Konovalovs as Raimonds and Vita Varpina as his mother.

‘Dream Team 1935’ debuted in Latvia last November. The film has been screened at multiple festivals in Europe, Asia and America, taking the Best World Cinema Award at the ‘Indy Fest 2013’ film festival in Indianapolis. The film has also been included in the International Basketball Federation FIBA museum’s video exhibition in Geneva.
The film is about the Latvian basketball team which became the first ever European champions that year.