Ulya

Soviet Union, Latvia, 1964. Ulya, an Old Believer teenage girl nearly two meters tall, grows up on a faraway country farm. Her unusual height troubles her family, but opens doors to a career as a basketball player: Ulya is whisked to Riga to join a famous team. Struggling with a world that only sees her for her height, she realizes basketball can't fulfill her dream of a normal life and goes back home. Ulya now faces a choice: to hide from the world or become its best basketball player.

COMMENTARY
The backstory of the Soviet champion Ulyana Semjonova is explored in an astonishing black-and-white film from the director of and actor in January (here also writer), winner of the 2022 Rome Film Fest.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
A person always carries within them a vague inner landscape, like a memory. For me, that inner landscape is Latgale—my childhood land in eastern Latvia. The same place where Ulya was born in a small village and later discovered by sports scouts. I understand this landscape deeply, and it became the key to the film’s poetic language. We began shooting in Latgale, and it shaped the entire aesthetic of the film, turning it into a dream of a person’s inner world. What makes this story especially personal to me is that the film takes place in the year my parents met. My father was an amateur photographer, and I inherited five boxes of his negatives. Many scenes and the overall atmosphere of the film are directly inspired by his photographs.