Viesturs Kairišs Brings Basketball Legend’s Story to Screen in ‘Ulya’

Latvian filmmaker Viesturs Kairišs is bringing the story of basketball legend Uljana Semjonova to the screen with “Ulya,” his third Latvian Oscar contender, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film stars rising actor Kārlis Arnolds Avots as Semjonova and is opening Tallinn, giving the sports biography a prominent festival platform alongside its awards ambitions.

The Hollywood Reporter’s interview presents “Ulya” as a film that has also found a substantial audience at home, describing it as a “blockbuster.” The supplied account does not include box-office receipts or attendance figures, so the scale of that commercial success cannot be independently assessed from the available material.

Semjonova’s place in basketball history provides the film with a subject whose significance extends beyond Latvia. She was the first non-U.S. woman inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, a distinction that places international recognition at the center of the real-life story Kairišs has chosen to tell.

Avots’ casting is a defining feature of the production: a rising male actor portrays a celebrated female athlete. The available account identifies that choice without explaining how the performance was developed or how the director approached the portrayal, leaving those elements beyond what can be established from the supplied material.

Kairišs also discusses Herzog and Bergman as inspirations for the film, according to the publication’s summary of the interview. Those references offer a glimpse of the cinematic influences behind “Ulya,” although the supplied text does not specify particular works, scenes or techniques that informed his approach to Semjonova’s story.

The film’s description as Kairišs’ third Latvian Oscar contender adds an awards dimension to its festival exposure and reported domestic popularity. That designation should not be confused with an Academy Award nomination: the available material does not establish a nomination or provide details about the film’s progress through the awards process.

Taken together, the festival opening, reported audience response and Oscar positioning place “Ulya” at the intersection of national cinema and an internationally recognizable sporting achievement. Its subject offers a point of entry for audiences interested in basketball history, while the casting and the director’s stated influences bring attention to how that history is being interpreted on screen.

The Tallinn opening is the next public milestone identified in the supplied account, with the film’s wider reception and awards prospects still to unfold. For now, The Hollywood Reporter’s interview frames “Ulya” around Kairišs’ creative approach, Avots’ central performance and the challenge of bringing a pioneering basketball figure’s life to cinema.