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The NKC head stressed that although Baumane’s film has four strong competitors representing “big European countries”, mainly France, it is the first time this has happened in Latvian cinema – a Latvian film, which is a cooperation project with Luxembourg and the USA, is applying for the European Film Academy Award.
Representative of the Latvian branch of the International Federation of Film Critics, film scientist Zane Balčus, noted during the press conference that the jury saw a total of more than 80 films presented at the festival this year.
There has been a lot of competition in the feature film category, which applies to both the films themselves and their creators.
Balčus pointed out that in recent years, a wide range of film professionals have been attracted to film ratings, each of which can make its own contribution.
On the other hand, speaking of the evaluation of the films and the agreement on the nominations, the film scientist emphasized that each of the jury members evaluated the films taking into account their professional knowledge.
There were categories for which there was a unanimous decision among the experts, but there were also those that required more time for discussion.
He pointed out that short films are quite a difficult category because there are so few of these works. Also, during the selection, it was almost necessary to decide whether to keep this category, but since there are quite strong works of young authors, this year three short films are included in this category.
According to Balčus, there were relatively few nominations in the animated film category. According to her, this is due to the fact that several animated feature films are currently being made in the country, the premiere of which is yet to come.
The relatively small number of applications is also influenced by the involvement of animation film professionals in new projects. However, the judging panel decided that all submitted animated films were of high quality and professional, so they too were nominated.
The cinematographer noted that the number of “Big Kristaps” categories has increased in recent years, with the addition of another feature film with more episodes.
He pointed out that this year has been one of the categories that experts have been discussing a lot.
