Discoveries from Lithuania World Cinema

Woman searches for her torn-off fingernail - the only thing that could prove that what her body remembers is not just a nightmare.

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’.

Four school friends - Karolis the successful but cuckolded businessman, Šampūnas the womanizing ad director, Tankas the tough but lovesick officer, and Princas the struggling father of three - reunite at a class reunion and, determined to change their lives, wager on increasingly outrageous dares. From streaking naked through their office, military drills, a reunion with an ex, and even a kindergarten, to spending a whole day speaking only the truth, they push each other’s limits, testing not only their courage but the strength of their friendship.

Jonas pretends to be blind and enters a TV dance contest, where he meets his attractive dance partner Saule. Soon they become the show's most popular contestants. While the whole nation thinks that Jonas is blind, Vytas, an old acquaintance of Jonas, is released from prison. As reminders of the past keep creeping up on them, Vytas is suppressing contradictory feelings - to seek revenge or forgiveness in such a manipulative world - for sins that were and for sins to be made.

A man named Valentine is alone on Valentine's Day., and it drives him mad. Meanwhile, other couples are experiencing their own problems.

One of the most successful ultrarunners of all time Lithuanian Aleksandr Sorokin talks about challenges, emotions and thoughts running 24h in World Championship in Verona, Italy. He openly describes the hardest moments of his attempt to break 24h running world record. That is one of the rare moments when elite athlete talks about weaknesses and pressure he feels every day and how he cope with it.

Strahinja and his wife Ababuo left Ghana with a dream of a better life in Europe. Instead of reaching the western part of the continent, they were deported back to Serbia. Strahinja has started to build himself a career, while Ababuo is unable to fulfil her ambitions and she feels increasingly frustrated. When she disappears one day, Strahinja sets out to find her… A crystal clear, humanistic story about the need to find one’s place in the world. It’s also a tale of love, the most profound testimony of which might also be the most painful.

Saulius is a journalist who reflects today’s society: everyone has heard about sustainability, everyone knows they should act more responsibly, yet just hearing these words often triggers a kind of rejection. To Saulius, these topics seem too complex, too boring, and too distant, but he decides to give it a try, because if no one even attempts to change, nothing will ever change. Driven by a sincere yet somewhat naïve desire to understand the world, Saulius embarks on a personal journey through the labyrinth of sustainability ideas, trying to answer the question: what is sustainability?

Creator's inner self starts to evolve.

Julia, a promising twelfth-grade violinist who has suffered emotional abuse from her special education teacher for years, finally dares to fight back when the teacher keeps on her playing before a competition performance. The teacher quickly quells her resistance with threats and pushing, but as she is about to leave the classroom, Julia has an idea. When Julia goes to take the stage, the teacher pushes Julia to go for it.

A young couple's love is tested by the weight of illness and their own limitations. When Marius, who lives in denial of his diabetes, suffers a life-threatening hypoglycemic episode, Ina embarks on a frantic search for glucose.

The film is based on the novel by Romualdas Granauskas, winner of the Lithuanian National Cultural and Arts Award, and is the chronicle of a young man’s shifting relationships as he adjusts rather dramatically to the unfamiliarity of freedom. The film will be shown in Lithuanian with English subtitles. Duburys won the Silver Crane Award in Lithuania. It has been selected as Lithuania’s entry for this year’s Oscar nomination in the foreign language film category. Duburys was entered in the Montreal World Film Festival, Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and has been invited to Cairo International Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

A giant girl lives in a wild rural environment. When the modern world enters this isolated Russian Old Believer milieu, the girl is taken away and dragged into the world of professional sports. The aim does not differ much from that of a circus in the Middle Ages – to entertain audiences and exploit the limits of people’s mental and physical abilities. But the girl proves to have unbelievable willpower and athletic talent. She is able to adapt and triumph in this new world. This is the story of the famous basketball player Ulyana Semyonova.

Two men, an aged farmer and his deaf-mute son, live in a remote area, isolated from civilization. Though sharing the same roof, problems, and sorrows they remain very distant from one another. Their attempts at conversation turn to misunderstanding if not conflict. Father thinks his son is abnormal and childish. Son sees his father as insensitive and crude. Can the two men find their way into understanding one another?

On the surface, Arnas, Davis, Kuisis and Robertas are ordinary, unremarkable guys, but they have a secret hobby - pretending to be Aras officers, punishing those who evade justice and helping those who need help the most. One day, things take an unexpected turn when, after a routine and successful "mission", the friends get caught up in a real-life robbery that ends tragically. Realising that they can't continue to deliver justice so easily, the foursome is faced with the difficult dilemma of whether to quit or to keep going and risk falling into the hands of the real cops.

Where does love go when lovers break apart? Or when they stay together? How do you find the spirit to fall in love again? Is it permissible-possible and is it possible-legal to love several people at the same time? What becomes of our love after death, is it really that important or simply inevitable? This is about the laws of love, which are as simple as one, two, three, when we are still in love, but incomprehensible and unexplainable once love retreats. About the logic of the heart, which has nothing in common with common logic, just like non-Euclidean geometry disproves and surpasses the Euclidean one.

Between 1944 and 1953, 170,000 Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians put up fierce resistance to the Soviet invasion, hiding deep in the vast Baltic forests. Driven by a dream of freedom, they defied a ruthless empire with few resources but unwavering determination. Through previously unseen archives and the poignant accounts of the last survivors, this documentary reveals their clandestine struggle, their heroic sacrifices, and their legacy, timeless symbols of a desperate fight to escape the Soviet stranglehold and preserve the flame of independence.

After his star actress, Indre, murders her mother, rich-kid filmmaker Romas plans her escape from Lithuania. His Mexican boyfriend Carlos helps them reluctantly. On the road, Romas begins shooting an improvised experimental film. As events take an unexpected turn, their secrets, memories and emotions make this journey wilder than any film Romas could have imagined.

At the foot of Europe’s largest glacier, seven Icelandic siblings once lived in deliberate isolation, dedicating their lives to observing ice and nature long before climate change had a name. Their abandoned farmhouse becomes a living archive, animated by photographs, objects, and a 16mm film that restores gestures, spaces, and a vanished way of being in the world.

Jacqueline - a woman who is obsessed with control - adopts two children from a foreign country with her husband. To help with translation, the kids are accompanied by Gabriele, a twenty-year-old who is just starting to taste the sweetness of power.

After 30 years of exile in Paris, Jana travels back to Vilnius. She wants to see again the lake that Paulius, her first love, called “Walden”.

Ornithologist Vilius, trapped by guilt and loss, gets himself into a dangerous smuggling business, unexpectedly, this criminal activity forces him to rethink his life and reconnect with his daughter.

Oh, these men! No matter how long last, they still remain forever boys. And what is most concerned about the men and boys? Of course, women, cars and ... fishing! Superhit inexperienced producers created new Lithuanian comedy among us, lad ... heroes - four childhood friends, one sunny day decided to implement every Lithuanian dream - to go fishing in Norway. With colorful company embark on an adventure, humor and storyline full of surprises journey, about the dream of every man and secretly participate would like all women!

A dystopian story set in post-war Ukraine, where a frustrated film director struggles to make the most of his life after being denied the opportunity to pursue his movie-making career. Estranged from his wife and daughter, who have been living in Vienna and are reluctant to return to their war-torn nation, the director tries to find solace in his conviction that the difficult times will pass and life will return to normal.

Former KGB agent finds out that his mother in law has hidden her treasures in one of chairs. Fast after he starts the search of diamonds and meets an aggressive modern man who helps him in his endeavors all over the place in nowadays Lithuania. Two very different men are united in their mutual desire to get rich.

They only wanted to challenge the unjust government. But once they did...they had no way back. When Baltic states regain their independence from the Soviet Union, thousands of Russians living outside Russia find themselves cut off from their native land. Some of them return to Russia, others become naturalized citizens and go on with their lives in the new country. However, two Russian brothers, Kostya and Yura, are among those who do not want to return to Russia, nor to live under the new government. When brothers find out that they must leave the country or will be deported, they decide to challenge the government that they believe has violated their rights. The brothers capture a minivan full of passengers and demand a ransom of a million dollars as a compensation for the injustice inflicted upon them. According to their plan, none of the hostages will be hurt, however, as the brothers capture the minivan, the first blood spilled.

Prince Hamlet of Denmark, son of the recently deceased King Hamlet, and nephew of King Claudius, his father's brother and successor. Claudius hastily married King Hamlet's widow, Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, and took the throne for himself.

Two girls are trying to get drugs in late-hour Vilnius while their adventures open up woeful city's nightlife, full of apathy and failed communication.

Algimantas Puipa directed this 1997 drama about a painter wrestling with childhood memories of his father being exiled to Siberia.

History of Teutonic Order and Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania.

A trio of unemployed homeland-hating emigrants come back to Lithuania for holiday, where by accident, they become entangled in fake businessmen roles and discover their motherland again.

Fake life bursts like a bubble when Donatas receives a phone call from his rich and powerful father.

Dinner is a short documentary about people from the most vulnerable social layer. Every day they gather at the door of a charity canteen, waiting for a plate of hot food. Half-hour waiting makes for a dozen life stories revealing the fragile line between human hope and despair.

For more than a decade, Artūras Morozovas has been photographing people in vulnerable situations – those who have experienced the Russian occupation and its consequences, those affected by the war in Ukraine, and those experiencing social isolation in Lithuania. He explores social problems that are still felt in both countries as a result of the Soviet occupation.

Dive into these exciting short films from France, Lithuania and the UK that explore the hopes, loves, aspirations and even the darker side of girls on the cusp of adulthood.

A situational comedy about a mix of nutty people that come together in an environment of peculiar provincial show business of a developing country, each of them craving for fame and riches.

An animated feature film, later re-released as a mini-series, is an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, a classic of world literature, tells a story of love, sacrifice, loyalty, journeys, and the heroic adventures of Greek warriors at sea and on magical islands.

A desperate hunger strike meant to capture global media attention slowly unravels into a hilariously bleak showdown between ambition, reality, and an empty stomach.

Akvilė and Jonas were a couple until Jonas fell in love with a man. But Akvilė cannot forget her lover and continues to appear in porn films, even without him. She begs her childhood sweetheart to make one more film with her. Jonas agrees – but only so that he can leave the country with his lover.

A sound designer has to rethink her whole life when her sight and hearing start to get out of sync.

After his girlfriends' suicide, Gediminas moves back to his single mother living in a block of flats opposite Kaseta's home. In his attempt to make himself oblivious, the young man works as a taxi driver at night. Grief, self-reproach, mother's alcoholism and illness (epilepsy), pestering and cynicism of the clients picked up from night clubs toss Gediminas into an emotional abyss. The painful experience dissolve the tiny bits of his fragile wish to live. He visits a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a self-group for families of suicides, but one day he breaks down. At a crucial moment, the old Kaseta spots Gediminas through his telescope.

A Lithuanian doctor, priest and a war refugee Alexander Ferdinand Bendoraitis (1919-1998) resettles to the Amazonian jungle in the 1960’s and becomes a local hero: he establishes a boat- clinic network, the first jungle radio, starts the pacification of local indigenous tribes and builds the most modern hospital in Amazonia. However, as he gets involved in a brutal crime, countless fake narratives that he had created around himself begin to resurface.

Forty year old Tomas Papartis is a regular guy, who lives a regular life. One day due to system failure he is declared dead. His bank card doesn't work anymore, his apartment is sold to the government, as if he had ceased to exist. Here stars Tomas's battle to prove- he's alive!

Every invention in the USSR was unparalleled in the world, the Soviet foreign travels technology was no exception. This film will demonstrate how citizen of the USSR travels and visits Romania, Finland, Georgia, Germany and other countries thanks to comrade Lenin and the Central Committee of the glorious Communist Party.

Indre and Paulius haven't kept in touch lately; but as his foot is in a cast, she agrees to drive him out to a small town near the airport, where his brother and her boyfriend died.

In 2020, when a French robotics student investigates his mother's guarded secret about his true Armenian identity, he jeopardizes his university AI competition to travel to Artsakh and gets entangled in an unexpected full-scale war where he must rely on the evolving consciousness of his AI creation to save his life and learn the truth.

A short movie is as it is. It contains feelings, certainty, memories, experiences. For some, it may look like a simple video, for someone a movie, and for some it looks like a documentary. The short movie is meant to celebrate ba. 7th birthday. Completely honest, open and real, without any embellishment and perfectionism.

During the interwar period, a Lithuanian geography professor tries to convince the government to establish a backup state overseas, in order to save their country from ruin. However, the idea is mostly mocked and opposed. Still, there is hope in the secret support from the elderly prime minister, who has become disillusioned with politics.

Curious citizen Žygymantas, during an excursion in the dungeons, stumbles upon the relic hunter Teisutis, who has just unearthed a chest that should contain the treasure he was looking for so long ago. It turns out that there is no treasure in the chest, only a medallion with a strange inscription. Žygymantas helps Teisučius solve the riddle and unexpectedly summons the ghost of Barbora Radvilaitė. It turns out that Barbora's appearance may lead them to the Great Treasure of Lithuania, hidden in the dungeons of Mount Gediminas. Here begins an unpredictable and exciting journey full of adventure and laughter, where different characters get involved one after the other, also to find the mysterious treasure. But as they get closer to their destination, everyone sees something that no one could have expected...

An opera singer, who is a substitute for the primo uomo, has to spend the time of a performance routinely behind the scenes. He has yet no knowing that it will be his turn on that particular day to appear on the stage and replace an Italian singer who had fallen ill.

A visual odyssey of Sun Ra concepts through their followers - Marshall Allen and Abshalom Ben Shlomo. The film follows Sun Ra Arkestra band members and their journey across the desert, a promised land where Sun Ra once created his identity. Navigating through an astro-galactic world of sound, they find a reason to fight racism, injustice and vanity of the modern world - all through inner wisdom of music and sound. It's a story of infinite peace in a troubled world. An utopian planet where Sun Ra and his prophets celebrate the divine wealth of their spirits.

A group of classmates celebrate their graduation in an isolated place about which a sinister story is told.

Voters oust a bureaucrat - hoping that another one would read their written desire.

A young man who has come home from work tries to set up an ideal environment for himself to enjoy the calmness of blue hour.

The singer called Punk is no longer of much interest to anyone. After his brush with fame, it only took a few years of drugs and alcohol to reach rock bottom. After yet another small town concert, Punk ends up spending the night backstage, drunk and alone. When he opens his eyes in the morning, he sees a little girl, who introduces herself as his daughter. Two lost souls set out on a trip together – a trip which will not only change their lives, but will also bring them together to appreciate the joy it brings.

Come one, come all to see Kazys Grinius's 60th birthday party, which is sure to be one for the history books...

They're called water carriers, domestics, 'gregarios', 'Sancho Panzas' of professional cycling. Always at the back of the group, with no right for a personal victory. These wonderful losers are the true warriors of professional cycling.

Tekle and her young daughter, Ema, return from abroad to visit Dalia, Tekle’s mother. When Ema goes out to walk her dog, Dalia, fearing something terrible might happen to her granddaughter, starts looking for her.

A twenty year old still lives with his loving mother, but one of his ordinary days takes an unexpected turn.