Cinematic Ambition Meets Artistic Risk in Viesturs Kairišs’s Biopicture Feature Uļa
Directed by Viesturs Kairišs, the feature film Uļa explores the formative years of legendary basketball icon Uļjana Semjonova through a radical visual approach.
The Bottom Line
The Premise: Rather than chasing a predictable sports biopic arc, the narrative zeroes in on 12-year-old Uļa’s internal battles with isolation, identity, and rural Latgalian isolation before her rise to basketball greatness.
The Casting Risk: Actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots, nearly 30 during filming, takes on the lead role of the young protagonist, leveraging intense physical preparation over mere mimicry.
The Visual Engine: Cinematographer Wojciech Staroń anchors a distinct, two-layered visual aesthetic influenced by archival 1960s amateur photography.
Breaking Form: Why the Plot Takes a Backseat to Visual Poetry
In contemporary European cinema, few directors court audacity quite like Viesturs Kairišs. Speaking recently to Kino Raksti, the filmmaker noted his preference for creative risks that sit on the edge of madness. That precise philosophy anchors Uļa, a film where standard narrative beats are deliberately subjugated to visual atmosphere and emotional texture.
Here is the kicker: the plot itself offers few genuine surprises. Anyone familiar with sports dramas can map out the structural trajectory from remote Latgalian village to the basketball court. Yet, Kairišs is operating in a higher stylistic league. Instead of relying on tired cinematic tropes—such as illustrating adolescent angst through heavy-handed storm sequences—the production anchors its emotional stakes in striking metaphors, like the desperate, high-stakes rescue of a farm cow requiring radical, immediate action.
That artistic ambition relies heavily on the lens of Polish Director of Photography Wojciech Staroń. Marking his third feature collaboration in Latvia—following his arrival with Laila Pakalniņa’s 2015 feature Ausma—Staroń constructs a dual-layered visual world. One of these layers draws direct inspiration from the 1960s amateur photography archive of the director’s father, Viktors Kairišs, giving the frame an authentic, textural grain that streaming platforms simply cannot replicate.
| Production Element | Key Contributor / Detail | Artistic Intent |
|---|---|---|
| Directorial Vision | Viesturs Kairišs | Prioritizing cinematic risk and psychological depth over standard sports chronology. |
| Cinematography | Wojciech Staroń | Crafting a dual-layered visual structure inspired by 1960s amateur photography. |
| Lead Performance | Kārlis Arnolds Avots | Portraying 12-year-old Uļa with intricate physical discipline and emotional gravity. |
| Supporting Cast | Chulpan Khamatova & Shamil Khamatov | Delivering grounded family dynamics within a tight-knit Latgalian village setting. |
Navigating High-Risk Casting and Regional Authenticity
The most visible gamble of the production rests entirely on its central performance. Casting Kārlis Arnolds Avots—best known for his work in Soviet Jeans (2024) and Kairišs’s January (2022)—as a 12-year-old girl required immense physical calibration. Avots spent months studying feminine physical plasticity to embody the extraordinarily tall protagonist.
But the math tells a different story once you watch the film unfold on the big screen. The actor’s undeniable charisma and delicate, internal performance strip away any distracting questions about gender or age. Uļa’s journey is not about sporting accolades; it is about overcoming the crushing psychological weight of feeling like a biological anomaly in a remote Latgalian village.
Supporting that intimate core is internationally acclaimed actress Chulpan Khamatova as Uļa’s mother. Khamatova dissolves effortlessly into the fabric of rural Latgale, offering a pillar of quiet support whose conversations with her daughter often circle back to freshly baked pastries while carrying deep emotional resonance. Meanwhile, her real-life brother, Shamil Khamatov, injects sharp local color as Pavel, the fiancé of Uļa’s sister, navigating his awkward first encounter with the remarkably tall youngster with dry precision.
The Sonic Landscape and Theatrical Imperative
No discussion of the film’s atmosphere is complete without addressing its distinct sonic architecture. The musical backbone is shaped by the Estonian folk duo Puuluup, known for utilizing historic traditional instruments with deadpan seriousness. While the group’s wry public persona—often joking that their work is simply about agriculture and sports—might not map neatly onto a sports drama, their idiosyncratic sound infuses the project with an earthy, folkloric heartbeat.
That deliberate friction between the mundane and the monumental defines the entire enterprise. Yet, Kairišs and his creative team have engineered a piece that demands an immersive theatrical footprint.
The film’s dialogue with Kairišs’s earlier documentary work—such as the solitary church and iron warning rail seen in Pelicans in the Desert (2014)—extends a deeply personal cinematic universe.
Ultimately, Uļa asks viewers to look past the scoreboard and settle into the quiet, grueling labor of self-acceptance. It is an uncompromising piece of filmmaking that rewards patience and big-screen viewing. How do you feel about actors taking on unconventional physical transformations for biographical roles? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
