''The Chronicles of Melanie'' () is a 2016 Latvian

biographical drama A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudr ...

film directed by Viesturs Kairišs, starring

Sabine Timoteo Sabine Timoteo (born 25 March 1975) is a Swiss actress from the Lorraine district of Bern. She has appeared in more than thirty films since 2000. Early life Timoteo grew up dividing time between the United States and Lausanne, Switzerland. As ...

. The film is based on the real life of Melānija Vanaga. It was produced by Latvia's Mistrus Media and co-produced by the Czech Republic's 8Heads Productions and Finland's Inland Film Company. Two weeks after its domestic release on November 1 the film was watched by 35,000 people, making it the most-watched Latvian film of 2016.

Plot

Melānija and her son are forcefully moved from their home in Latvia to a slave camp in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

as part of the

June deportation The June deportation ( et, juuniküüditamine, lv, jūnija deportācijas, lt, birželio trėmimai) was a mass deportation by the Soviet Union of tens of thousands of people from the territories occupied in 1940–1941: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuan ...

in 1941. For the next 16 years, she retains her will to live by writing letters to her husband, whose destiny she knows nothing about.

Cast

as Melānija * Edvīns Mekšs as Andrejs * Ivars Krasts as Aleksandrs * Guna Zariņa as Katrīna * Maija Doveika as Vilma * Viktors Nemecs as Ampalov *

Erwin Leder Erwin Alois Robert Leder (born 30 July 1951 in St. Pölten, Lower Austria, Austria) is an Austrian actor. He is best known for his role as Chief Mechanic Johann in ''Das Boot'', a 1982 feature film directed by Wolfgang Petersen about a mission ...

as Jakob * Evija Rudzīte as Biruta * Baiba Broka as Anna * Kirill Zaytsev (Latvian: Kirils Zaicevs) as Lieutenant of the

People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs People's, branded as ''People's Viennaline'' until May 2018, and legally ''Altenrhein Luftfahrt GmbH'', is an Austrian airline headquartered in Vienna. It operates scheduled and charter passenger flights mainly from its base at St. Gallen-Altenr ...

* Astrīda Kairiša as Melānija's mother * Lilita Ozoliņa as deported woman * Ģirts Krūmiņš as Katrīna's husband Kārlis * Evija Martinsone as opera soloist

Awards

The Chronicles of Melanie received the award for best cinematography at the 2016

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, or PÖFF ( et, Pimedate Ööde Filmifestival), is an annual film festival held since 1997 in Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. PÖFF is the only festival in Northern Europe or the Baltic region with a FIA ...

. It was selected as the Latvian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the

90th Academy Awards The 90th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2017, and took place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was held on March 4, ...

, but it was not nominated. In the 2017 Latvian film festival

Lielais Kristaps The Big Christopher ( lv, Lielais Kristaps) is the highest award in Latvian cinema. Established in 1977, it is given out at the ''Latvian National Film Festival''. Due to different reasons, the festival has not been held in 1992, from 1994 t ...

The Chronicles of Melanie won the award as the Best feature film, while members of the

film crew A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast, as the cast are understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera o ...

received awards as the Best Director, Best Actress, Best Design and Best Costume Design.

Reception

Wendy Ide of '' Screen Daily'' described the film as "a potent account of the human cost of Soviet ethnic cleansing in the Baltic region". She compared it to the 2014 Estonian film '' In the Crosswind'', which also is about a woman subjected to the

, and wrote that ''The Chronicles of Melanie'' is "less experimental in approach". Ide wrote: "The distorted sound creates a sense of delirium; the painfully slow movements of the malnourished women gives the film a nightmarish quality. Time slows down, both for the exiled Latvian women and also, at times, for the audience. It all amounts to a challenging viewing experience."

References

External links