Academy Award Nomination Submission Best Foreign Language Film from Latvia: ‘Dawn’ by Laila Pakalnina
Laila Pakalnina’s “Dawn” (“Ausma”) premiered at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in 2015.
“The beauty of ‘Dawn’ lies in its richness, ambiguity and willfully elusive intentions. Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter
Based on a Soviet propaganda story about Young Pioneers (the Soviet equivalent of a Boy Scouts), a young boy named Morozov denounced his father to Stalin’s secret police and was in turn killed by his family. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to become informers, at any expense. In our film, 75 years later, we call him little Janis. He is a pioneer who lives on the Soviet collective farm “Dawn”. His father is an enemy of the farm (and the Soviet system) and plots against it. Little Janis betrays his father; his father takes revenge upon his son. Who then in this old Soviet tale is good and who is bad? This film reveals that a distorted brain is always dangerous. Even nowadays. Laila Pakalnina, Director
This is a modern day fairytale, with the requisite gore, takes some getting-used to, but once into the story, it is a very original and very surrealistic tale of the false pretense of Soviet efficiency played against peasant buffoonery. An unfamiliar Eastern European sensibility shows strongly throughout this film, which may or may not appeal to western audiences. But for those with patience, the film’s sense of humor and sense for the absurd pays off.
The director, Laila Pakalnina, began making documentary short films in 1991 and her technique shows its documentary roots; she has 31 credits which include docs, shorts and fiction features including “The Hostage” (2006), “The Python” (2003) and “The Water” (2006). Her next project “Insect Night” is one of 17 selected for the upcoming Baltic Event Coproduction Market at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
The Polish DP, Wojciech Staron, also contributes to the beauty of the production. Suffice it to say that Poland and its great film school in Lodz (where Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski, DPs Emmanuel Lubezki and Dariusz Wolski and many others matriculated) has produced some of today’s greatest cinematographers.
The stunning beauty of the lighting needs further elucidation. “Dawn” is, in fact, the prototype and demonstration film of Digital Sputnik, a Burbank and Estonia based digital lighting company and one of the producers of the film. It is very proud to be the main lighting tool on “Star Wars: Rogue One”. Its DS systems are used for selected sequences of the new Jason Bourne movie, DS modular systems are used to light “Guardians of the Galaxy” Vol. 2.
Digital Sputnik is definitely a new player in Hollywood. Its newest DS LED system cuts back considerably on infrastructure and overhead, thereby allowing the creative team to focus on visual storytelling and creation of compelling images. By starting with digital lighting on the set, all digital cameras have to do is shoot; no post-production color correction is needed. The flexibility, modularity and mobility of the system allows for smaller teams, reduced power consumption and faster setups without compromising on the light quality or output.
We are witnessing the content creation industry going through a fundamental change. This change started with the adoption of digital imaging and is bringing with it the fusion of camera, post-production and lighting disciplines. Knowledge of digital cinema, camera- and post-production disciplines is expanding itself into on-set lighting. This change is all about creating synergy and increasing uncompromised creative freedom. At Digital Sputnik we are dedicated to creating solutions that cater for this new way of thinking.
The film is a Latvian/Estonian/Polish coproduction between Hargla Pictures, Digital Sputnik and Staron Film with the support of the National Film Center of Latvia, Latvian Cultural Capital Foundation and the Polish Film Institute.
Scriptwriter Laila Pakalniņa
Cinematographer Wojciech Staroń
Production Designer Jurģis Krāsons
Costume Designer Natalia Czeczott
Makeup Artist Dzintra Bijubena
Sound Anrijs Krenbergs
Music Vestards Šimkus
Editor Kaspar Kallas
Producers Laila Pakalniņa, Małgorzata Staroń, Kaspar Kallas
Supported by
National Film Centre of Latvia
State Culture Capital Foundation
Polish Film Institute
Estonian Film Institute
