Karlis Arnolds Avots on His ‘Hamlet’ Croisette Debut With ‘Ulya,’ Acting With Soul, Being Told He Was Too Tall and Championing Misfits

With a population of about 1.8 million, comparable to that of West Virginia, the Baltic country of Latvia is punching well above its weight in terms of cinematic breakouts. Case in point: Flow‘s Oscar for best animated feature in 2025. Now, an emerging actor from Latvia is taking an increasingly global spotlight and is gearing up for his Cannes debut: Kārlis Arnolds Avots.

You may have seen him in the dramedy series Soviet Jeans as protagonist Renārs, a rock’n’roll fan who sets up a secret underground jeans factory in a psychiatric hospital in 1979. He won the best actor honor in the international section of the 2024 edition of Series Mania for the role. Or you may have caught him in January, which won the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival award for best international narrative feature and saw him play an aspiring filmmaker in the capital Riga, who finds himself caught up in the political turbulence of the January 1991 struggle for Latvian independence.