Lithuanian photographer, the legend of Soviet Sixties' generation Vitas Luckus tragically passed away in 1987. Yet the life and times of the talented rebel still impassion and lead us to a journey questioning why, at all times, we are wary of those who are really free.
To say life in Vilnius, Lithuania, during Soviet occupation was tense would be an understatement. People were followed and photographed; restaurant dinner plates were bugged to catch potentially illicit conversations; car accidents were staged to waylay people while surveillance equipment was installed in their apartments; and many were detained, interrogated, imprisoned, or worse. Through expertly assembled KGB archival footage, earnest present-day interviews, and cleverly crafted returns-to-the-scene-of-the-crime, directors Maxì Dejoie and Virginija Vareikyté present an acutely compelling contemplation of a “non war” from both sides.
A CrossFit trainer becomes the father of a baby girl, Snow White. Snow White’s mother dies, and her father marries a young woman obsessed with CrossFit and herself. She works out all the time in order to be the best. And she really is the best – she can do 50 burpees. In the meantime, little Snow White plays and grows up in the CrossFit gym. Time passes, and one day it turns out – while the Stepmother can do 50 burpees, Snow White can already do 53 burpees...
It was the year 1984 when a group of architects decided to organize a one night music band as a New Year's party joke in Kaunas, Lithuania. The joke proved to be so good that rumors about the new exciting rock band spread from lips to lips and soon their intellectual circus grew into the Rock Marches - massive events involving thousands of people - that transformed into the big meetings for Lithuanian Independence later named the Singing Revolution. This is the story about the people who raised their independence with the smiles and songs regardless of the danger of the situation.
With striking images and meticulous sound work, Burial reminds us of the paradoxical relationship between scientific development and the destruction of nature. Questioning the effects of human activity on the planet we inhabit and which we have put at risk, the film focuses on the unsolved issues of nuclear plants and nuclear activity.
Two Moldavian friends begin a journey full of adventures and suspense trying various business ideas in order to earn enough money to achieve their dreams.
A musician on his way to meet a fellow fiddler, encounters two girls and is taken aback by their talks about afterlife. The musicians walk towards a village observing events, unable to discern phantasy from reality. Later, both men attend a funeral, where archaic rituals intertwine with the practice of marrying a dead girl to an ‘afterlife groom’.
Egor is a vet at a training facility for hunting dogs in a remote region of the country. Surrounded by foxes, deer, badgers, and dogs, he lives in a small building next to the house of the facility's master. He treats the dogs, cleans the kennels, oversees the workers, and meets with clients and their dogs. It's easier for him to get along with dogs than with people. Egor is willing to take on any job to get closer to the facility's master and his near and dear. He wants the impossible - to become a member of that family.
A young man's confusion in present times. The protagonist is looking for answers to questions that are relevant to many of his peers, coming of age in between a nostalgic socialist childhood and ideas pushed by a young democracy, relentlessly rushing forward.
The year 1991. A hot summer night. Lithuania-Belarus border. It is nearly dawn. There are two customs wagons on the roadside. One of them has been burnt down. In the other one, border guards sit in silence. Someone opens the door without knocking.
The story of the film is based on the artist’s home videos and documentary material covering a decade of his creative work. The author presents his apartment as a living space and the main character of the film. By engaging his entire family in the project, he creates a new micro-social model of his home, where they all act according to self-imposed rules. Events that take place are both casual and creative: the living space becomes a stage, routine becomes performance and the other way round, art projects become family entertainment, as well as a radical transformation of the home.
An artist and her whole existence spent away from her homeland. The insight of a son, that forty years later interprets again the work of his mother.
Based on a Lithuanian writer’s novel “Breathing Into Marble” the film focuses on the challenges of a modern family. It is a romantic ballad with the plot of a thriller. Izabele and Liudas – itellectuals living in a homestead near a big city and raising the son, Gailius, who has a case of epilepsy and is smarter than most children his age. Izabele convinces her husband to adopt a six-year-old boy who is unable to put down roots in this new family and always fights for mother’s attention. Director Giedrė Beinoriūtė speaks about relationships, invisible bonds connecting our lives and responsibility for each other.
Andrei Tarkovsky said, “I find it hard to imagine the inner world of women, but I think it must be connected with the world of men…”
Energy Island invites viewers for an immersive sensorial trip into the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania, now undergoing a decommissioning process. The images of contaminated ruins transform in the fire, light and shadow; the destruction of the industrial space consistently reveals how Cold War energy structures impact recent geopolitical processes and leave planetary threats over long periods of time. The project takes a geological approach – it reads things that compose this flat landscape as a stack of stratigraphic layers. The manmade space is understood as a sedimentary process and the infrastructures, as well as the mineral resources, are assessed as the key parameters defining a development of the project.
After the National Performing Arts Awards, the bus of actors returns home: everyone was nominated, but no one won. The bus is filled with thank-you speeches, karaoke and champagne. As the actors are driving along, they suddenly see their colleagues' car on the side of the road.
A film about a plastic spoon and a society that has reached a high level of development – oil is being retrieved from subterranean depths, transported to processing plants, turned into plastic, transported to another plant, where it acquires the shape of a spoon, transported to convenience stores, where we buy it, and is then soon tossed into the trash. In other words, this is a film about the efforts put into making a spoon that can be thrown away so effortlessly.
Young couple Aurora and Darko move to live in her grandpa’s house in the post-war de-occupied village. They are taking care of an 88-year-old man, who’s blind. Aurora begins to be tormented by the fear of death. Gradually, it becomes the central theme of their lives and puts everything in its place.
It is a love story of one family. There are neither romantic moments nor miracle changes. But there is a strong potential to change our understanding about what happy and loving family is or could be.
