Jan 4, 2024

Latvian President Participates in Awards Campaign for Signe Baumanné's "My Love Affair With Marriage"

For the first time this awards season, an animated feature film has been nominated by a head of state. That film is Signe Baumanné's "My Love Affair with Marriage," and the head of state is Latvian President Edgars Rinkvi.

Latvia is an Eastern European country on the Baltic Sea that has not always been a major player on the world stage. It is about the size of Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County combined, with less than half the population of the city of Los Angeles. Nevertheless, Lynkvi's endorsement is significant because it is hard to think of any other example of a country's president being involved in an Academy Awards campaign for an animated film.

Link? vi? s short video statement, which the filmmaker shared on her social media accounts, called Baumane "a very talented and visionary director" and described her film as "a (very interesting and truly personal) story about self-exploration, music, and animation."

Baumane, who is based in New York, was born in Latvia during the Soviet-Russian occupation and produced "My Love for Marriage," a co-production between the United States, Latvia, and Luxembourg. The film is a long-shot contender in this year's Oscar race for Best Animated Feature, and is by a wide margin the lowest-budget film of the 33 qualifying films

.

But as we noted last week, "few animated feature films this year have been as personal and emotional" as Baumane's film. This musical film tells its story from the point of view of a bold and unflinching woman, something that mainstream animated feature films dare not consider. The film won more than 20 awards during the festival and was nominated for the prestigious European Film Award in 2022.