International distributors continue to fall for Ulya. The Latvian Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film has closed sales across a long list of territories ahead of opening the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, and director Viesturs Kairiss notes it is now the second most-watched film in Latvian history. One sales executive summed up the buzz bluntly: “This film is a blockbuster.”
Ulya (Credits: Variety)
Ulya Latvian Oscar Submission Closes Sales Around the World
The latest deals take Ulya to North America (New Mountain Films), France (Destiny), Italy (Invisible Carpet), Slovakia (ASFK), former Yugoslavia (Five Star Distribution), Estonia (Hea Film), Lithuania (GPI), MENA (Teleview), Finland (Cinema Orion), Poland (1989) and Brazil (Belas Arte). That is a remarkable footprint for a Latvian-language biographical drama, and it speaks to how strongly the film has played on the festival circuit.
Ulya world-premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a seven-minute standing ovation, and it went on to win its lead actor Karlis Arnolds Avots the Best Performance Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in July. Latvia’s National Film Centre selected it as the country’s official entry for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
The True Story Behind Ulya: A Two-Metre-Tall Teenage Girl in 1964
Set in Soviet Latvia in 1964, Ulya follows a teenage girl in a family of Old Believers whose height is approaching two metres at an alarming rate. Safe at home in her village, where she helps with farmwork surrounded by a loving family, she still faces a gnawing question from her parents and herself: is there really a place in the world for a giant-sized girl?
An answer of sorts arrives when her sister’s fiance secretly sends Ulya’s class photo to Karbergs, head coach of the legendary Latvian women’s basketball team TTT. Seeing huge potential, he whisks her away to the capital, Riga. Ulya hopes the big city will hold taller houses and taller people, but on the basketball court her height sticks out even more. Only with the help of her ill-mannered, foul-mouthed coach does she realise the way to escape everyone’s derisive eyes is to start playing better.
The story is inspired by the early life of Uljana Semjonova, once the world’s best female basketball player, a two-time Olympic champion, three-time world champion and ten-time European champion who played almost her entire career for TTT Riga. The film is a four-country co-production between Latvia’s Ego Media, Estonia’s Allfilm, Poland’s Staron Film and Lithuania’s Tremora, and it will open the 30th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival on November 6 before its French theatrical release on November 18. From a Cannes ovation to a record-breaking run at home, Ulya’s journey from a small Latvian village to the Oscar race is starting to look like the stuff of the movies itself.
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Source: Variety — read the full story there.