Kārlis Arnolds Avots Stars in 'Ulya' at Cannes — But You'll Know Him First From Amazon
The Latvian actor brings a gender-nonconforming performance to Ulyana Semyonova's story, world-premiering May 21 at Cannes Un Certain Regard. Here's where to find him before the film hits streaming — and why this performance matters.
What you need to know right now
Ulya premieres at Cannes on May 21, 2026 in the Un Certain Regard section. It's not on any streaming platform yet — and probably won't be for six to eighteen months. But Kārlis Arnolds Avots, the 29-year-old Latvian actor who stars in and conceived the film, is about to be everywhere anyway.
Amazon Prime Video drops Bloodaxe (a Michael Hirst Viking series) in 2026. The BBC/ZDF spy thriller Honey is coming the same year. If you miss Ulya at festivals, you won't miss Avots for long — he's already built a resume that caught the attention of European Shooting Stars selectors and Berlin Film Festival programmers in 2025.
The real question isn't whether to watch. It's where and when.
Who is Ulyana Semyonova, and why does a male actor play her?
Ulyana Semyonova was 7'0" tall. Soviet Latvia, 1964. She grew up on an isolated farm in a Russian Old Believer community — a religious sect that had broken from the Russian Orthodox Church centuries earlier — and was plucked from that world at thirteen to play basketball. She won 15 Soviet national championships, 15 European Champions Cups, and two Olympic gold medals (1976, 1980). She was the first non-American woman inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
But Ulya isn't a sports movie.
The plot — as confirmed by the Latvian National Cinema Centre — follows a giant girl dragged from her isolated rural world into the machinery of professional sports. "Not unlike a circus in the Middle Ages," the synopsis reads, "to entertain audiences and exploit the limits of people's mental and physical abilities." She survives. She triumphs. But the film's emotional core is about displacement and the violence of being remade into what others need you to be.
That's why Avots, at 6'5", playing a woman at 7'0", makes perfect sense — and why he did it deliberately. He didn't bulk up. He softened his body. He spent two years preparing to inhabit someone who felt too much for any room she entered. "I don't believe an actor acts with their gender," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "They act with their soul."
This isn't new territory for cinema — Cate Blanchett in Tár, the casting conversations around Hamnet, gender-fluid performance as emotional truth rather than literal accuracy. But Avots named both women as direct inspirations, which tells you the register he was reaching for. A kind of acting that abandons the body as identity and works purely from inside.
The Avots pipeline: Where to actually find him in 2026
Here's the honest map:
Coming first (likely):
- Bloodaxe — Amazon Prime Video, 2026 (exact date TBA). Avots plays Egil Skallagrímsson, a Viking poet-killer-sociopath hybrid. Michael Hirst created Vikings, so the pedigree is there.
- Honey — BBC/ZDF, 2026 (date TBA). A Killing Eve prequel spy thriller. Avots plays young Konstantin, the character Kim Bodnia originated. If you've seen Killing Eve, you know the role — and what it demands.
- Kill Jackie — Prime Video (date TBA). A thriller with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Avots describes his character as "the anti-hero with a heart."
Festival circuit (likely autumn 2026 onwards):
- Ulya — Cannes premiere May 21. After that: Toronto, London, San Sebastián festivals are typical stops for Un Certain Regard films that resonate with juries.
Streaming availability tracking: Movie OTT has regional breakdowns for where Avots' prior work is currently available — useful if you want to catch Soviet Jeans (his 2024 Series Mania Best Actor winner, about an underground jeans factory inside a Soviet psychiatric hospital) or January (Viestur Kairish's 2021 Tribeca prize-winner) before the new projects drop.
Why Viestur Kairish matters — and why this isn't a debut filmmaker story
Kairish has already proven himself. January (2021) won Tribeca's best international narrative feature in 2022, dramatizing Latvia's January 1991 independence uprising. It starred Avots. They're a working partnership, not a one-off collaboration.
That matters because Ulya isn't a first-time director learning on the job. It's a confirmed auteur returning to a lead actor he trusts, with a story neither of them needed to make — which is the only reason to make something this strange.
The Latvian National Cinema Centre confirmed the selection as a significant milestone. Latvia has 1.8 million people and just won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars (Flow, 2025). Now this. The country's punching way above its weight in European cinema right now.
What Avots actually said about misfits and belonging
In his Hollywood Reporter interview ahead of the premiere, Avots said something that cuts through standard actor-interview platitude:
"I've always been moved by stories about misfits, about square pegs in round holes. I felt like an outcast, like all of us who are too skinny, too broad, or way too tall or short, or just too different from the standard format. So I could empathize with Ulya and feel the film is really universal."
Not "the film explores themes of otherness." He said: I felt like an outcast. That's the difference between an actor explaining a role and an actor who actually inhabited it. Semyonova died in January 2026 — before seeing the finished film — and Avots addressed it directly: "I feel what's most important is that she knew there was a film being made about her by someone who truly loves her."
That's not PR. That's someone who spent two years living inside another person's skin out of respect.
Where Ulya will actually stream — and when
Real talk: no deal is confirmed yet. Not Netflix, not Prime Video, not MUBI, not anywhere. Un Certain Regard films have an unpredictable relationship with streaming distribution, especially from smaller markets.
For Indian audiences specifically — MUBI India is historically the strongest bet. Films like Sick of Myself and Happening found audiences there after their festival runs. Amazon Prime Video India is the second-most-likely home, given that Avots is already in Bloodaxe for Prime Video globally.
No Hindi or regional-language dub has been announced. A subtitled release is far more likely.
Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker monitors distribution deals as they break from Cannes — it's the best resource for checking when Ulya lands on your preferred platform across regions. Set an alert there if you want to catch it the moment it becomes available.
Why this film connects to something bigger than basketball
What's striking is how much Ulya positions itself outside the sports-film tradition entirely. It's closer to David Lynch's The Elephant Man or Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser — films about bodies as spectacle, about the violence of being looked at, about what happens when the world decides to own you.
If you've seen either of those films, you understand the emotional DNA Kairish is working with here. It's not Hoosiers. It's The Elephant Man with a basketball court.
The performance itself — a male actor playing a woman without apology or explanation — is a quiet statement about what acting actually is. Not mimicry. Not costume. Character as a thing that lives in the nervous system, not in the body's surface. That's harder to pull off than it sounds, which is probably why Avots spent two years preparing for it.
The timeline: What happens next
May 21, 2026 — Ulya premieres at Cannes, Un Certain Regard section.
Summer–Fall 2026 — Festival circuit. Toronto, London, San Sebastián typically follow Cannes selections that resonate with critics.
Late 2026 or early 2027 — Streaming deal announcement (this is a guess based on historical patterns, not confirmed).
2026 — Bloodaxe and Honey land on Prime Video and BBC, respectively. Most casual viewers meet Avots here.
If you're the type who likes to catch films early, Cannes accreditation or festival travel are your only options right now. But honestly? Wait for one of the other festivals. The press screenings are usually better, and you'll get actual reviews before committing six hours to a subtitled art film about a teenage girl learning to exist in a body the world won't leave alone.
For the latest on Ulya's distribution, keep checking Movie OTT as deals break from the festival circuit. They track regional availability across streaming platforms as soon as it's official.
