Latvia chooses Dawn for Oscars

Latvia has chosen Laila Pakalniņa’s Dawn as its submission for the foreign-language film category at the 89th Academy Awards.

The Latvian-Estonian-Polish co-production takes us back to life on a Latvian collective farm in the 1920s, centering on the story of young communist Pavel Morozov, who betrays and informs on his corrupt peasant father and suffers for his actions.

Dawn premiered in competition at Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn last year. Simultaneously serving as a critique of communism and a tribute to the filmmaking of the era, taking inspiration from early Soviet film master Sergei Eisenstein’s unfinished Bezhin Meadows, if selected Dawn will be Latvia’s first film to be shortlisted for the foreign-language film category at the Oscars.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter