The Latvian was recognized as the best actor at Europe’s biggest series festival

Carl Arnold Source. Photo: Instagram @karlisarnoldsavots

The biggest European series festival “Series Mania” has ended with great success in Latvian cinema. The series “Soviet Jeans” won the main prize of the festival in the competition of more than 50 world series, while the actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots received the best actor award in the “International Panorama” section.

Latvia was represented in an event of this scale for the first time. The director of the series “Soviet Jeans” Stanislavs Tokalovs tells about the award: “The audience award was very unexpected for us. The organizers counted the votes until the last moment, as the screenings ended shortly before the award ceremony. They found out the results when the red carpet had started. It was a very unexpected surprise for us. The director of the festival presented the award, emphasizing in her speech that series are meant for the audience and the audience award is the most important at this festival. It is a great honor for me to win the most important award of the festival.”

“The success of the multi-series film “Soviet Jeans” is truly unique – two awards at the most important TV series festival in Europe, which takes place in Lille, France, are proof of the competitiveness of Latvian cinema in the very demanding format of the so-called quality TV series. It should be emphasized that this series, along with three other series, was made in the program of the National Cinema Center with funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). We, the National Cinema Center, are extremely proud of the phenomenal success of “Soviet Jeans” in the international competition “Series Mania”, in which serials produced by huge global corporations participated, and we hope that in the future, funding from the Latvian film industry will allow these important performances to continue. It should be noted that Kārlis Arnolds Avots has become the most internationally awarded contemporary Latvian actor – he can now add the best actor award from France for his work in the TV series “Soviet Jeans” to his award for the best acting work in Viestura Kairis’ film “January” (2022) at the Rome Festival ,” says Dita Rietuma, head of the National Cinema Center.

Kárlis Arnolds Avots, who plays the main character Renard, shares his first impressions: “Feelings are contradictory, like everything in my life. It’s as if someone up there liked you, he was good to you, but also laughed at you a little, because I didn’t make it to France to receive the award – at seven o’clock both the award ceremony and the premiere of the production “The Master and Margarita” started. That’s the irony of life. Nothing to do. The award means a lot to me, especially the fact that people who don’t know me have given me this recognition. They judged only by my role, by my performance in the series and made one simple guy from Latvia infinitely happy. It inspires you to push yourself further in the challenges and who knows, maybe try something somewhere else. Big thanks to both directors and all the wonderful crew! That award is as much theirs as it is mine, without them none of this would ever happen. This is our joint achievement. I hope they celebrated this unexpected victory properly. We must move on.”

“I am very happy about Karl, because he is not only an actor in the series, but also a very good friend of mine. When close people achieve international achievements, it is very heartwarming. After the award presentation, everyone in the jury said that Karl Arnolds Avots completely charmed them. They unanimously voted that Karlis deserved to win this award, greatly appreciating the artistic and technical side of acting. The jury recognized that it was a very high level of acting,” says Stanislav Tokalov.

The character of Renard played by Karl Arnold was created by the scriptwriters of the series, Stanislavs Tokalovs, Teodora Markova and Valdemars Kalinovskis. “Karlis is a great actor and together we worked a lot on finding Renard’s character. I am glad that the series has also received an international evaluation. It was nice to experience the sold-out screening at the festival, in which the French laughed and lived together just like here in Latvia,” says director Juris Kursietis about what he experienced at the festival.

“‘Tasse Film” representative Elina Los says: “Talks with the programmer of the “Series Mania” festival started already in September of last year, when they found out about us as part of another festival – “Serial Killer” (Brno, Czech Republic) – where we went to talk about our experience in creating “Soviet jeans”. At that point, the series had just been filmed, but based on the idea of ​​the series and a small video we had put together, they already liked it. When we sent the first two series to the official selection in December, “Soviet Jeans” was chosen as one of the first, and completely unanimously. The jury discussed other selection series and shared their thoughts, but everyone was equally in love with “Soviet Jeans” at first sight. Obviously, the same principle also applied to the festival audience, who chose our jeans as their favorite, even though we were competing for this honor with huge, big-budget series with big actors that we will soon see on platforms like Netflix.”

Kārlis Arnolds Avots previously received the best actor award in 2022 and 2023 “Great Kristaps”, as well as in 2022 the Vittorio Gassman award as the best actor at the Rome Film Festival for the role of Jaž in the film “January”.

The series “Soviet Jeans” is a tragicomic story about free thinkers and conformists, about relationships and choices, about borders and the opening of the world. And about the pants that changed the world! At the end of the seventies – a time when the fiercest propaganda against western culture was spread throughout the USSR – an ardent rock music fan set up a successful underground jeans factory in a Latvian psychiatric hospital.

Starring: Kārlis Arnolds Avots, Aamu Milonoff and Igors Šelegovskis. Cast: Andris Keišs, Gints Grāvelis, Dainis Gaidelis, Ivars Krasts, Gundars Āboliņš, Yevgēnijs Isajevs, Jānis Jarāns, Nikolajs Šestaks, Valentīns Novopoļskis, Gatis Gāga, Indra Briķe, Juris Bartkevičs, Matīss Ozols, Jānis Skutelis, Jurijs Djakonovs, Baiba Broka, etc.

The series won 12 nominations of the national film award “Lielais Kristaps” and three “Lielais Kristaps” awards, was selected in the program of the Berlin International Film Festival “Berlin series market selection 2024” and entered the series festival “Series Mania”.