<\/p>\n
Everyone loves the surprise Latvian best animated feature Oscar winner Flow<\/em><\/a>. The dialogue-free movie<\/a> about a solitary cat\u2019s emotional journey has become a calling card for the country and its director and producer Gints Zilbalodis<\/a>. But Mat\u012bss Ka\u017ea, his writing and production partner on Flow<\/em>, is not resting on such laurels.<\/p>\n The 29-year-old recently traveled to the 78th edition<\/a> of the Locarno Film Festival<\/a> for a quick visit to its Locarno Pro industry strand<\/a> to present what his Dream Well Studio and his Trickster Pictures have coming up, including the new feature animation from Zilbalodis, called Limbo<\/em>, as well I Love You, Lex Fridman!<\/em>, which he is directing himself together with actress and co-director Iveta Pole.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n After that, THR<\/em> caught up with Ka\u017ea to hear about some of the many projects he is currently juggling, the state of the Latvian film industry, and the soft power of Flow<\/em>.<\/p>\n Tell me a bit about your two companies and how busy they are right now. <\/strong><\/p>\n I work at two different studios, which are in the same building. We have Dream Well Studio, which is the animation studio, which is, of course, known for Flow<\/em>. It really only does Gints Zilbalodis films after it was founded basically for the production of Flow<\/em>.<\/p>\n The other studio, called Trickster Pictures, is where I do all the live-action and documentary stuff. I\u2019m working on a lot of projects. That\u2019s the thing about me and where Gints and I differ. He is a deep focus person who likes to concentrate on one singular project, and I need 15 different projects at the same time\u00a0in order to feel like\u00a0I\u2019m doing something worthwhile. I direct movies. I produce movies. I direct theater. I teach at the Latvian Academy of Culture. I write some of the\u00a0films I work on. Sometimes I write plays. So I do a lot of stuff at the same time, and that\u2019s the way my brain works.<\/p>\n Locarno Pro featured you and others at a special \u201cLatvian Film Previews\u201d section. What projects did you present or talk about there?<\/strong><\/p>\n I was there with two projects. On one, we\u2019re still in pre-production, which is\u00a0Limbo<\/em>, the next animated film by Gints\u00a0Zilbalodis\u00a0that will be released in 2028.\u00a0So there\u2019s still three years of production post for the film ahead of us. Just like with\u00a0Gints\u2019\u00a0previous projects, this is also a film where the different stages of production are kind of happening at the same time. As Gints is doing the animatic, which is what he\u2019s working on right now, he\u2019s also writing the script, and he\u2019s also composing hours and hours of music to test on the animatic. So everything is kind of\u00a0simultaneous. All these different elements, which traditionally come in various stages, are being worked on at the same time. We\u2019re very excited about it.<\/p>\n What we can share at this point is that it\u2019s going to be the first time when Gints is working with dialogue. So there are going to be some actors involved in the project. Gints is always taking on new challenges for himself. And there will be certain elements, just like with\u00a0Flow<\/em>, where the production process and the state of mind of the director kind of resemble the plot line and the emotional through line of the film.<\/p>\n What\u2019s important for us working on this project is for it to be another independent\u00a0European animation.\u00a0 That all sounds really exciting! Can you share anything more about the plot of Limbo<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Not at this stage. But what we can talk about is the way it\u2019s going to be made. It\u2019s still going to be mostly in Blender, just like\u00a0Flow<\/em>, so open-source software. Right now, we have a very small team working on the film,\u00a0maybe three or four people are in the office from day to day, and that\u2019s the Latvian team that\u2019s working on it. We have received the base funding in Latvia from the National Film Center. They gave the film the highest grant they\u2019ve ever handed out, a bit more than 2 million euros ($2.3 million), including the development money,\u00a0which is a lot for any film center in Europe,\u00a0but especially for a small country like Latvia. So there\u2019s a lot of trust in the project.<\/p>\n What we\u2019ve seen with\u00a0Flow<\/em>\u00a0is that it\u2019s become, let\u2019s say, an element of cultural diplomacy. Latvia is now recognized because of\u00a0Flow<\/em>, and we hope to continue this with\u00a0Limbo<\/em>\u00a0and other projects coming from the studio. It\u2019s really to get more attention, not just for Latvia and our companies, but for Latvian animation and cinema in general. I think where our country is unique is that we\u2019re super, super small, and yet we have these animation auteurs like\u00a0Gints Zilbalodis and Signe Baumane, who did\u00a0My Love Affair with Marriage<\/em>, and is now working on her new project, and Ilze Burkovska-Jacobsen\u00a0who did\u00a0My Favorite War\u00a0<\/em>and has a presentation of her upcoming work here in Locarno. And these are all auteurs who are working in the feature-length animation format, which is a very expensive and specific format. And it\u2019s very rare that there are so many high-quality animated films coming from a very small country. So that\u2019s something that we really can capitalize on.<\/p>\n I think that animation really has a chance to be that significator that hopefully drives tourists to Latvia. This summer, we met several people in Riga who had come there just because of\u00a0Flow<\/em>, because the film is very popular, especially in South America. So that\u2019s it\u2019s an instrument that can really be a part of cultural diplomacy, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s important for us to keep going.<\/p>\n Maybe we can now also attract attention to Latvian live-action movies and documentary cinema, which has a very special poetic tradition. So, yes, it is about\u00a0Flow<\/em>, but not only. There\u2019s this other wonderful cinema to discover for everyone, too.<\/p>\n You mentioned a second project that you presented at Locarno\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I have several projects in development\u00a0and production. I\u2019m co-directing\u00a0a mockumentary called\u00a0 Of course, you could say this is kind of delusional, but we explored this fascination with media personalities that you don\u2019t really know. And it ends up being a very funny mother-daughter road trip movie across America, encountering all these different American cultures and parts of America as she\u2019s stalking Lex Fridman. I don\u2019t think Lex Fridman knows about this project, though. We tried contacting him several times, and she wrote letters to him and things like that. So it\u2019s a movie on the border between documentary, because she plays herself in the film, and fiction. It has this blend of comedy and drama.<\/p>\n The way we worked on this project was very peculiar. We went to these different places in America, and we asked people to play themselves, but in situations that we modeled. I\u2019ve never worked in this way where you encounter real personalities and you think about who we could do this scene with and how it should play out.<\/p>\n They are not famous people, but interesting. For example, in Texas, we met a priest who does exorcisms, but he\u2019s also a policeman. So it\u2019s about these strange combinations and really digs into what\u2019s going on in America, even though that\u2019s not the primary through line. We went to 11 states. We started in New York, and we ended up in Texas. So we went through the Carolinas and everything that\u2019s in between, and then Louisiana. We went in April, and we still have some pickups to do, but the film will be finished sometime next year. And it\u2019ll be out sometime next year.<\/p>\n It sounds like you got enough going on, but let me ask if you\u2019re working on anything else in the film space\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n At Trickster, I\u2019m working with Ilze Burkovska-Jacobsen, who is doing her first live-action movie, which is a movie about not really belonging to any cultural identity and trying to find your own. It\u2019s about a Latvian teenager who grows up in Norway with her mother, who works there as a janitor, and she finds out that her mother has lied to her and that her father is, in fact, alive in Latvia, and she runs away from home in order to try to reconnect with her dad who has his own problems. It\u2019s also a blend of comedy and drama, kind of like\u00a0Little Miss Sunshine<\/em>, where you have this nice blend of tenderness and dark comedy. You could call it post-Soviet humor, humor that\u2019s about this generational trauma that comes from your extended family, or the generations before you, and being unable to deal with this change from the socialist system to the capitalist system.<\/p>\n We\u2019re going to Norway to pitch that, because we\u2019re trying to find a Norwegian co-producer, because it\u2019s going to be set in Norway and in Latvia.\u00a0Ilze is\u00a0Latvian, but she\u2019s married to a Norwegian, and she\u2019s living between Latvia and Norway. So she\u2019s very familiar with this being in between two cultures. That project is called\u00a0Legato<\/em>, like the musical term.\u00a0Ilze is also doing an animated film presented in the Latvian pitches at Locarno, not with me, with a different producer.<\/p>\n And a project that I think is very much worthy of attention. It is called\u00a0Ulya\u00a0by Viesturs Kairi\u0161s and is about a female basketball player [Ulyana Semjonova] during the Soviet times in Latvia. It\u2019s not about basketball. It\u2019s more of a coming-of-age drama. Ulya is two meters-plus tall and a very, very interesting personality with a peculiar history. It is about how this personality was treated in the Soviet Union, somebody who\u2019s maybe considered a bit strange and deviant outside the basketball context.<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everyone loves the surprise Latvian best animated feature Oscar winner Flow. The dialogue-free movie about a solitary cat\u2019s emotional journey has become a calling card for the country and its director and producer Gints Zilbalodis. But Mat\u012bss Ka\u017ea, his writing and production partner on Flow, is not resting on such laurels. 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We are working together with Sacrebleu Productions, our French partners from\u00a0Flow<\/em>, right now. But the main thing is that we want for Gints to be able to keep his very unique process, and for us as the main producer to keep the rights to the final cut.\u00a0Because we have these conditions met, Gints can be comfortable working on the project,\u00a0and he\u00a0really needs to feel safe about what he\u2019s doing. It has to be an experience where he has full control.\u00a0Even I, as\u00a0the producer, have the right to comment and to give notes,\u00a0but when we\u00a0disagree, I always say to Gints: \u201cIf you want to do it this way, you know best.\u201d<\/p>\n
I Love You, Lex Fridman!<\/em>\u00a0There\u2019s this American podcaster called\u00a0Lex Fridman<\/a>, who invites people of different professions to talk about what\u2019s going on in the world and the zeitgeist, including AI, philosophy, the different ongoing conflicts in the world, and so on and so forth.\u00a0And there\u2019s this Latvian actress Iveta Pole, who lost her job at the theater and eventually moved to Berlin. She\u2019s very, very talented, but she couldn\u2019t work in her profession in Berlin because she didn\u2019t know German, so she worked as a courier. She had this very boring job and started listening to these podcasts. And all of a sudden, while listening to Lex Fridman\u2019s voice, she starts feeling butterflies. And she says, \u201cMat\u012bss, can we make this into a\u00a0film project? I have this urge to go to America and to tell Lex Fridman that I\u2019m the right person for him.\u201d<\/p>\n