EUFF 2023: Soviet Milk

Latvia | Ināra Kolmane | 2023 | 110 min

In Latvian and Russian with English subtitles

Based on the international-bestselling novel by renowned Latvian author Nora Ikstena, Soviet Milk is a powerful mother-daughter drama set in the era of the Soviet occupation of Latvia. Unfolding between 1945 and 1989, the film revolves around the life of Astra, a promising doctor who loses everything due to her opposition to the totalitarian Soviet regime: her career, her love for life, and even her maternal instinct to breastfeed her baby. “I didn’t want to live and I didn’t want her to drink milk from a mother who doesn’t want to live.” As the years of struggle go by, her now grown-up daughter becomes her lifeline, trying to ease Astra’s depression and help her learn to live under the Soviet regime—a regime whose collapse may be on the horizon. An inspiring tale of love and loyalty.

“Maintains a high poetic intensity … A great merit of [Inara Kolmane’s film] is that she—without exaggeration and didacticism—is able to build a serious foundation of humanism.”

Dmitry Rantsev, Arterritory