Latvian President Gets Involved In Awards Season Campaign For Signe Baumane’s ‘My Love Affair With Marriage’

In what may be an awards season first, an animated feature has received an endorsement from a head of state. The film is Signe Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage and the head of state is president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs.

Latvia, a country on the Baltic Sea in eastern Europe, isn’t necessarily a heavy hitter on the global stage. It is the size of L.A. and San Bernardino counties put together and it has less than half the population of the city of Los Angeles. Nevertheless, Rinkēvičs’ endorsement carries significance as there is no other instance we can think of when the president of a country has gotten involved in an animated film’s Oscar campaign.

In his brief video statement, shared by the filmmaker on her social media accounts, Rinkēvičs calls Baumane a “very good and visionary director” and describes her film as a “very interesting, really personal story [about] self-exploration, music, and animation.”

New York City-based filmmaker Baumane was born in Latvia while it was under Soviet Russian occupation and she produced My Love Affair with Marriage as a co-production between the United States, Latvia, and Luxembourg. The film is a longshot contender in this year’s animated feature Oscar race, and among the 33 qualified films, it is the lowest-budget production by a wide margin.

But as we pointed out last week, “few, if any, of this year’s qualified features feel as personal” as Baumane’s film. The musical film tells its story from a bold and unflinching woman’s point of view that mainstream animated features wouldn’t dare consider. The film has won over 20 awards during its festival run and was nominated for the prestigious European Film Award in 2022.