Discoveries from Lithuania World Cinema

An allusion to the last song of the Kauai 'o'o Bird.

An NKVD interrogator is about to meet and question a talented writer he himself never was able to succeed. For to be strong and convincible he prepares for an interrogation and rehearses.

A young man going to a grocery store suddenly stops at the bread aisle and a memory of his lost partner comes back.

A documentary about the rock pioneers and legendary rock bands of the 1960s-1970s in Lithuania, an era that brought with it the extraordinary power of youth, the hunger for new ideas, the infinite thirst for freedom and the love of music.

The film springs from at least three ideas connected to each other in an irrational way: the story of a cow being taken to the butcher, the description of simple pleasures, how to ascend to the top of a hill and descend in a wheelbarrow, and the portraiture of a several blind people. The great, big eyes of the cows are seen in contrast to the unseeing eyes of the blind people.

Kake Make's six adventures, starting at home, will soon expand to various magical corners of the world where she will meet her imagined friends monsters, pirates and even travel to the Tooth Fairy's feast.

A young photographer's eye is caught by a solitary man with a balloon. The boy tries to approach the stranger unnoticed and take a picture of him, but the moment he presses the camera shutter, the world stops.

After a sleepless night, a woman leaves her house determined to put an end to her torrid relationship. Some memories are not so easy to leave behind, however, and we are now left with a portrait of a soul caught between the optimism of her new opportunities whilst still held back by the nostalgia of her past.

Every day after school Mikas meets his friends Sonata the squirrel and Gabriel the cat at the Milkshake Bar. Coming from different backgrounds, the three are still best friends. One day they come across a photo of a bun-eating champion bear who looks an awful lot like Mikas. Perhaps that's Mikas' dad?

Eimantas and Migle finally decide to move in together. One day Eimantas notices a snake in the toilet. While this confrontation ends without any casualties the atmosphere between the couple changes when the fear of a reptile at their house, slowly turns into the real paranoia.

The true story of Loreta Gedvilaitė, a Soviet Lithuania mob wife who sues her husband's murderer for defamation after he calls her a ‘barracuda’ on national television in 2015. The court procedurally dissects Loreta’s youth - the dangerous love affair, motherhood, status-driven excess - and rules against her.

A small town investigator's memories about a tragic love for her music teacher always come back. After the town is shaken by a teenage girl murder, where the main suspect is her ex-lover, investigator is taking the case.

Based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka.

Created in response to, and incorporating, the oldest sculpture in the collection of the world’s only “Devil Museum”, in Kaunas, Lithuania. Commissioned for the 2021 Kaunas Biennial. An archetypal cast of characters: Archangel, White Witch, Bat, Devil, Crone and “Warbanks”- a financier who looks suspiciously like Andy Warhol – shape-shift through negotiation, trickery, and transformative exchange: trading hope and transmitting threat between them. Identity slips as morality slides. Violence begets grief, but experience offers the choice of wisdom. Will the Archangel claim it? A cautionary tale about greyscale, The Trampled Devil embodies the ethical ambiguity of our species: suggesting that only through vigilance and an honest heart might we hope to keep our inner devils pinned beneath our better natures.

Wishing to restore a broken bond with his son, a father throws himself into Vilnius nightlife.

The border between Lithuania and Belarus used to be a fluid border between Soviet republics. Today it is one of Europe's forgotten outskirts, with the Schengen fence dividing communities, families and lives.

Four people have lived for many years in a small apartment. Their hearts remain young, but their minds, clouded by time and a sad, perpetually drunken fate, no longer function clearly and cannot think straight.

A short superman spoof film. Inspired by Turkish trash movies of the 70s.

The concert "Pasikeist" at the Compensa Concert Hall in Vilnius drew you into the visual and mystical world of music from the very first sound. In the ruins of a future house, as the red clock strikes an ever later hour, reality and dreams begin to mix, guests appear and everything is not as it seems.

Twenty-five-year-old Mantas lives with his grandmother in a cramped apartment. He finds this life tiresome, but when his grandmother's health suddenly deteriorates, Mantas realizes that he is not yet ready to say goodbye to her.

Vaiva dreams of living in Spain with her Spanish boyfriend. Before leaving for the foreign country, she needs to save up some money for her new start and begins working as a nurse for a bedridden man in a remote village of Lithuania. Time passes by slowly here, and the Spanish lover doesn’t pick up the phone for days.

With RIPARIA, Emilija Škarnulytė proposes a visual crossing of the Rhône via Lake Geneva. Using scientific techniques of photogrammetry and underwater sensors, she follows the course of the water, beyond the waves, scraping the benthic sea floor, the domain of the riparian and the lacustrine, to read the effects of human intervention. Considering time in its thickness, she explores hydrology and its mythologies, questions in a poetic way what happens in our landscapes and suggests what might happen.

After the war began, memorial plaques bearing the names of victims of repression started being torn down far more often than before. The Last Address project didn’t have the resources to keep up with the vandalism. A group of activists stepped in: they began making temporary cardboard plaques and set out to track down those responsible.

Animated short.

Cycling in Africa: Namibia

Vytas is a resident of a blocked houses quarter and he is just as dull as his neighborhood. Though the young guy is over his twenties, he still lives with his parents - spending their days watching TV. Vytas' girlfriend Ona is a bit different - she is independent, knows her likes and dislikes, has some friends - one of which she starts seeing more and more often. This leaves no sunshine in Vytas life at all and makes him wander for the truth in the maze of the blocked houses quarter.

Max goes on a date with another guy, Tadas, whom he met online. Max feels uncomfortable and timid so Tadas decides to act on his own initiative. He tries to get to know Max as they embark on a night ride around the city but Max is evasive to talk about himself. Max feels torn between his feelings and Tadas' pressure. Eventually he breaks down and reveals his true identity.

A girl wants to be the smartest person in the world. When all the things she's learned can no longer fit in just one head, her mother buys her a backup one.

Is the legend of the transatlantic flight of Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas still relevant to the new Lithuanian generation?

A young couple of lovers is separated by the unexpected and tragic death of the girl. A few months after the incident, the man’s mental health has deteriorated. He starts to meet his dead lover in every corner.

This audiovisual album consists of demagnetized video cassettes purchased at the Kalvarijos Market and my personal documentations of everyday life recorded with a VHS camera, as well as music composed based on my experiences after moving to Vilnius. This creates a connection between my own and other people’s personal experiences. With this work, thus, I aim to talk about human issues that we often choose to ignore.

A collection of intimate thoughts, read aloud, that become the soundtrack of one of Jonas Mekas beautiful film journals.

A woman and a man in a vital fight - over an empty milk carton.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmaker Vytautas Oškinis shared a home with his grandfather, former head of state Vytautas Landsbergis. Their quiet domestic life is punctuated by political commentary and the sounds of piano and flute. As Landsbergis revisits his most important documents and works before his fragile memory fades, Oškinis’s camera captures a story about the bond forming between generations, and about a spirited, creative mind residing in a body increasingly resistant to it. Their artistic collaboration culminates in a joint appearance on the contemporary opera stage in the film’s finale.

A group of teenagers rent a house with a sauna for a party. Everybody is having a good time: dancing, singing, drinking, talking. The party ends and everybody leaves, but in the morning the housekeepers come to clean the place and in the dressing room they find a girl who is trying to find the button of her ripped up trousers.

The film features an incredibly low angel’s flight over the dunes of Nida, Trakai castle, the lakes of Aukstaitija (Highlands), the roofs of the Old Town of Vilnius and the fantastically beautiful church steeples. It’s like a mystical gliding just above the treetops, meadows covered by early morning mist, as well as the narrow streets of Vilnius.

"Shine" is an animated short film, which pictures a symbolic fight for the Lithuanian language during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a poetic ode to Lithuania and its difficult struggle to keep the Lithuanian language alive through the historical changes. Dramatic exile to Siberia, Lithuanian book smuggling, and various movements for independence portrayed through various symbolic metaphors.

Alexei, after spending 15 years in prison, is released on probation. It is difficult for him to accept the new order. Ridden with guilt, he tries to come to terms with his daughter Maja, who has become a prostitute.

Animation without dialogue, set with excerpts from Lithuanian folk songs, which tells a traditional Lithuanian tale in black and white images. After bathing with her two sisters, Egle goes to get dressed and discovers a snake in her clothes. Not caring about her promise, she agrees to marry the snake in exchange for the return of the clothes.

A man is waiting for some test results. He expects the worst but at the same time hopes for the best. He spends a week in a limbo of his own creation, neither here nor there, dreading the things that haven't happened yet.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the failure of Communism has been symbolically documented by many tv reportages of removals of monumental public sculptures, but the citizens of Vilnius in Lithuania did the unexpected!

Two sisters go to a city. It is the place, they strongly believe, that all their dreams will be fulfilled. Because they are young, cheek and nothing can stop them. However, the more they try, the faster their dreams and hopes vanish.

Ship is an overnight cruise on the occasion of a birthday celebration of Algirdas Stravinskas, the star of Lithuanian choreography in the former Soviet Union, culminating in a dance performance by a young contemporary dance troupe. On the cruise, the universal urge for beauty and creativity unites those who have already become history and those who are yet to make it.

Young prostitute Nastia wakes up in a van at an isolated gas station. There is a man Dima in front of her whom she has never seen before. Nastia tries to run away but the stranger forces her to go to an obscure journey together with him.

A kiosk vendor stands in an empty supermarket daydreaming and contemplating the ontology of people and commodities.

After loosing her husband, Beata turns to full-blown circle of bohemian life. On her quest for an adventure, she meets Rorbert, weird guy working as guard in some clothing store....

One of the most important battles of Middle-ages.

Hollow Earth is a visual meditation and examination of contemporary resource conditions within the circumpolar areas of the North. Combining research material, landscape shots and archival footage, this short film hopes to reflect over the changing image of the north, as a site where violence, desire, greed, and emotions are played out.

The film presents Justinas Vienožinskis, the patriarch of Lithuanian painters and founder of the National Academy of Arts, through a dramatic story about a temperamental and independent man.

Utilizing the third act motifs of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters as a jumping off point, Dmitry Krymov’s Fragment focuses in on Olga, the eldest of the three sisters. Like many of Chekhov’s heroes who attempt to overcome fate, she is doomed to fail, but it is in the attempt itself that she becomes so close and dear to us. Ultimately, we empathize with and love this very recognizable person who can’t adequately protect herself, her love, and her home.

A risk-averse man gets a great opportunity to invest other people's money in a profitable business.

Who are you ?

The film is a poetic meditation on the lifelong journey of one man’s never-ending search for home. We follow Abshalom Ben Shlomo through a day at his home in the Negev desert in Israel, as we travel simultaneously through the cosmos with him as an African American refugee, legendary jazz musician, and spiritual searcher.

Like everything rotates around: vodkas searching, vituperation, floating barge, wind gusts. It seems the people, and the nature feel approaching farewell, and intermittent band, repetitive shots and phrases, accentuated the importance of the passing moment.

A story about a bunny who decided to grow his own cabbage. And for that it was necessary to get seeds from St. Peter who lives in heaven...