Mellow Mud

A young girl in rural Latvia has to make life decisions that even a grown woman would hesitate to tackle.

SYNOPSIS

Loneliness, disillusionment and the experience of first love reveal the character of Raya, a 17-year-old living in rural Latvia with her grandmother and her little brother Robis. A staggering turn of events shakes up their lives, and the young girl must come to decisions that even a grown woman would find difficult to make. In his strong debut feature, director Renārs Vimba carefully handles the delicate theme of coming-of-age and accepts the challenge of telling the story through the eyes of a young girl.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

When working on a film, the author must take into account the fact that it creates a world in which he will have to live for several years, and this world will have characters one will have to cohabit day in day out. This world came to me in a vision about a fragile girl who, against all odds, is ready to face anything that threatens her world. I sympathized with her idealism, directness, and courage; all I had to do was follow her and, leaving out flashy slogans and artificial conceptual ambitions, bring it to the viewer as truthfully as possible. I hope the film, just like the world inhabited by its characters, is simple, direct, as beautiful as it is harsh, and, after all, life-confirming.

Mellow Mud won the Crystal Bear at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival and numerous international awards for its poignant, realistic portrayal of adolescence.