{"id":150105,"date":"2025-11-24T10:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T10:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/150105\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T10:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T10:43:07","slug":"latvias-oscar-contender-dog-of-god-sells-to-germany-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/150105\/","title":{"rendered":"Latvia’s Oscar Contender ‘Dog of God’ Sells to Germany, Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cDog of God,\u201d<\/a> Latvia\u2019s second-in-a-row animated Oscar<\/a> contender after the winning phenomenon \u201cFlow,\u201d continues to bark out loud after its successful launch at Tribeca and follow up bow at 30-plus festivals, including Sitges and Tallinn\u2019s Black Night.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter major sales to Cartuna for North America<\/a> and ESC Films for French-speaking territories, Berlin-based Media Move has clinched deals on the \u2018Monty Pythonesque\u2019 animation pic with Little Dream Pictures for Germany and Weird Wave for Greece. Little Dream Pictures will release the pic under its label Animation Addicts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe only Baltic pic vying for the European Film Awards, both in the best European Film and animation categories, \u201cDog of God<\/a>\u201d is \u201cbuilding on its festival and awards buzz, and attracting a lot of interest in the specialised market,\u201d said Media Move\u2019s Justyna\u00a0Koronkiewicz, currently negotiating rights for Japan, Poland, Latin-America and Korea. \u201cAudiences want something fresh, elevated, in new genres and styles. We\u2019ve seen with an innovative\u00a0movie like \u2018Hundreds of Beavers,\u2019 how indie distributors took their guard down; now they take their chances with daring content, betting on a niche but devoted fan base. We\u2019re extremely happy that all our distributors have committed to a theatrical release with \u2018Dog of God,\u2019\u201d said Koronkiewicz. The U.S. launch via Cartuna is slated for second quarter 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tA polar opposite to Gints Zilbalodis\u2019s family animated pic \u201cFlow,\u201d \u201cDog of God\u201d is an adult-focused horror comedy. Directed by Latvian brothers Lauris \u0100bele<\/a> and Raitis \u0100bele<\/a> who share the writing credit with\u00a0Ivo Briedis and Harijs Grundmanis, the rotoscoped animation was depicted in Variety as \u201can envelope-pushing mix of savage satire and parabolic fantasy, set in a miserable 17th-century village where the sacred is frequently profane, and vice versa.\u201d The third \u0100bele brother Marcis serves as cinematographer.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story centres on an 80-year-old self-proclaimed werewolf called The Dog of God who turns up at a woman\u2019s trial for witchcraft with a mysterious gift: the Devil\u2019s Balls. \u201cHis arrival triggers a chain of unexpected events that climax\u201d in a wild sexual rave party, transforming the village into a frenzy of unleashed desires,\u201d runs the logline.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Variety after the pic\u2019s screening at Tallinn Black Nights\u2019 Midnight Shivers, New-York Film Academy alumnus Raitis \u0100bele who graduated in clinical psychology \u201cbecause my brother Lauris did philosophy and I couldn\u2019t do the same,\u201d said he got the idea to turn Ivo Briedis\u2019 initial story\u00a0into animation after working on \u201cFlow\u201d as production coordinator.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIvo approached us because of our previous doc \u2018Baltic Tribes, Last Pagans of Europe.\u2019 We first tried to make it in live action. But it was super hard to find the tone, the angle and the money of course. After spending a year helping the \u201cFlow\u201d creators put their animation team together, I had the idea to use animation to push the film\u2019s universe and themes,\u201d says Raitis.<\/p>\n

\n\tA second pivotal moment was post-COVID, when the filmmakers could tap into a special recovery fund for experimental films. \u201cWe felt free to unleash our creativity as it was O.K. to be experimental.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEuropean Genre Forum<\/p>\n

\n\tThe \u0100bele brothers then attended the European Genre Forum, including the workshop\u2019s finale in Tallinn. \u201cOur mentors said, your audience is adult animation, don\u2019t hold anything back.\u00a0That audience has seen Japanese animation from the \u201890s, which means they are ready for anything,\u201d Raitis recalls.\u00a0Encouraged \u201cto go wild\u201d, the \u0100bele Bros decided to stick to a specific frame and stay close to their Baltic roots. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wanted to stick to our Baltic pagan culture and in the film, all the naughty stuff are directly inspired by traditional folk songs. Then we widened the story of a court trial in the 17th century with a werewolf and added \u2018fairy-tale like characters and magician spells.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Raitis, the pic, which features a flagellation-obsessed cleric, is not anti-religion but anti-authority, whatever its shape. \u201cWe are against the use of power. We\u2019re not against a hierarchical society when it\u2019s natural. But every hierarchy fucks up at some point. When order becomes too strict, it needs to be challenged. In Latvia, we\u2019ve lived under Soviet occupation, and since gaining independence [in 1991], we\u2019ve seen all the benefits of living in a democracy. We know its meaning and value.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRaitis said besides support from the National Film Centre of Latvia, the Latvian-U.S pic which he produced with Kristele Pudane for Tritone Studio for less than \u20ac1 million ($1.1 million), found a white knight in U.S. indie producer Giovanni Labadessa of Lumiere Lab. Impressed by the Latvian filmmakers\u2019 2021 \u201cTroubled Minds,\u201d, the L.A.-based producer helped them lock the financing.<\/p>\n

\n\tOscar campaign<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNow we\u2019re all working hard on the Oscar campaign,\u201d said Raitis whose brother Lauris \u2013 at press time \u2013 was flying to the U.S., with a special Latvian present in his bags to AMPAS members: Chaga mushroom body skincare. \u201cThese aren\u2019t psychedelic but medicinal mushrooms with healing powers. I hope Lauris will make it through customs with them!\u201d, quipped Raitis who hopes to build on the \u201cFlow\u201d momentum and make it to the next round of Oscar short-listing for best international feature Dec. 16.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFlow\u201d has propelled Latvian \u2013 and Baltic cinema \u2013 onto the global stage but Gints\u2019 film has also opened the doors to the full spectrum of animated pics outside Pixar and Disney,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tNext up for the brothers is the live action pic \u201cWagner and Satan\u201d about the German composer\u2019s formative years in the Latvian capital. \u201cIt will be a thriller full of paganism, occultism, a true Faustian drama,\u201d pledges Raitis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDog of God,\u201d Latvia\u2019s second-in-a-row animated Oscar contender after the winning phenomenon \u201cFlow,\u201d continues to bark out loud…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[27580,91687,146,85,46,91688,54544,91689,83056],"class_list":["post-150105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-academy-awards","tag-dog-of-god","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lauris-u0100bele","tag-oscar","tag-raitis-u0100bele","tag-tallinn-black-nights-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}