Ināra Kolmane’s previous film Bille (2018), produced by Film Studio Deviņi (Latvia), Masterfilm (Czech Republic), Magic Lab (Czech Republic) and Studija 2 (Lithuania), got wide international recognition at various festivals, received The Best National Film Award, and the broadcasting rights were sold to HBO Europe. Apart from the Latvian production team, the film has a Lithuanian cameraman Rolandas Leonavičius and production designer Algirdas Garbačiauskas. The film is intended as an international coproduction, but there aren’t any confirmed partners yet. Another theme important to me is the relationship between mother and daughter, which weaves through the film like a red thread connecting three generations,” Kolmane told FNE. But the main aspect that caught my eye was the representation of the relationship between a human being and the official power, how this power breaks the life of the main character – an outstanding scientist and gynaecologist.

I was very much drawn to the atmosphere of the Soviet era, which reminded me of my own childhood and youth. “While reading the book I had the feeling that I wished to turn it into a film. While growing up, her daughter needs to find her own standing and place in life, living together with a mother who is disappointed in life. A young and promising doctor comes into conflict with the totalitarian Soviet regime and loses everything – her career, love for life and maternal instinct, denying her new-born daughter mother’s milk. The main events of Soviet Milk take place in the 1970s and 1980s. The first shooting period will run until the beginning of October in Riga and the district of Limbaži. The film is based on Latvian writer Nora Ikstena’s 2015 novel, which looks at three generations of women after the end of WWII, and which has already been translated into 20 languages (including English, Russian, Lithuanian).

Soviet milk