{mosimage}Her performance is no less outstanding; for her cinema debute in Juris Poskus' feature film debut Monotony young actress (born 1981) was awarded the Best Actress prize in Latvia.

In a way, Poskus' film mirrors the life-story of it's actress. Like the heroine of Monotony Iveta Pole came to Riga pursuing her dream of acting. The personal feel in Iveta's performance does not surprize audiences who know her from the prestigious New Riga Theatre (NRT) troupe. In 2004 when Iveta joined the troupe (after graduating from Dramatic Arts department of Latvian Academy of Culture) its director Alvis Hermanis started a new trend on Latvian stage. Actors were asked to participate in the creation of dramatic material drawing inspiration from their own lives and observation of life around them.

Around the same time documentary director Juris Poskus started working on his first feature. He wanted to create a film with strong roots in reality and invited some of NRT actors to work on the story for the film together. Iveta was one of them.

Recently she finished working in the Poskus' upcoming second film, Death to You. The story takes place in small village and Iveta plays a girl in a love triangle. As the director says, her character is more agressive and sexual this time. "Since Monotony, Iveta has grown much as actress, we had to make use of that," he explains. 'This girl is much more self-confident," says Iveta herself.

She continues working much in theatre (and is scheduled to perform at the Salzburg Festival next summer) but is open for new cinematic experiences. "Working in film is so very different than working on stage. But this far I've only known Juri's style of work! It would be interesting to get to know how it is to work with other directors."

Pole, born in 1981, plays a young provincial woman who comes to the capital Riga in hopes of becoming an actress and bringing some larger scope to her life. Instead, she finds herself caught up in a driftless world and torn between men, her dreams, and reality.